I’m about to try to switch from schematic to routing. I can choose a footprint for the components.
I did it, but I have one question: all the patterns are labled in inches (for example, there is a 0603 resistor
type. But in metric units, it would be 1608. One way would be to find the libraries, write a script to rename
everything because all the files seem to be text based. However, I guess I’m not the first one to have
this problem. Is there a way to rename (or better: alias) the footprint names? For example being able to
alias R_0603 to R_1608 would be a great help as all the SMD components I use are in metric sizes.
In the new repo the naming of such resistors is R_0603_1806Metric
So you could download the new kicad-footprints repo and use these footprints. But we are not yet finished in transferring footprints from the old repos to the new repo. (See TODO.md)
You can also use our generator scripts to generate footprints with your preferred naming convention.
The reason why we did not use metric size codes is that even in europe most distributors don’t list metric codes for all such packages. (The only distributor that lists them reliably for all components is farnell. And this only since their last major update to the webside.)
With the way my mind works I just do not trust libraries made by third parties.
They change too often and not always for the best.
My usual work flow is to copy symbols / footprints etc. to a library of my own and then check / modify them to my own preferences.
Then I put that library on the top of the library list, so all components there get loaded first.
When a project is almost finished I often make a copy of the project and delete all other libraries from that copy so I can guarantee there are no strange symbols getting pulled into my project (github or otherwise).
For new projects I of course use that libary so i know for sure all resistors, capacitors and other earlier used components are known to be good.