i’m using kicad 4 cause my teacher use it. I know it’s old but i tryed kicad 5 and i’m not able to do nothing.
I can’t use the file you have attached because it’s a .kicad_mod file and in kicad 4 i can onlyu load .mod file
I’m not a pro with kicad so i don’t know how to modify footprints.
do you know if there is a way to transform the file you have attached into a .mod file?
.mod is the file format from before version 4. You state you use version 4 so you can read kicad_mod files just fine assuming they are made for version 4.
So either check the old version 4 repos or use the backport release found in the version 5 repo.
See Kicad 4.0.x backport release of kicad v5 library is now available on github or Kicad 4.0.x backport release of kicad v5 library is now available on github
Plus if you consider switching to v5 then consider reading these two first:
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But the files are still .kicad_mod files and I can’t open them with kicad 4
If i upload the file could you please help me converting it in kicad 5?
as I sayd before I’m not an expert and I really need some help
What happens if you simply rename the .kicad-mod to .mod?
Euhm, Modifying Footprints and making custom libraries is real easy. Spend half an hour learning it, and then impress your teacher with your self made custom Footprints.
mmh okay
can you suggest me a video tutorial for that?
if i simply rename the .kicad-mod to .mod it doesn’t load in the component list
How are you trying to open the file?
A .kicad_mod file must be placed into a library. A footprint library is just a folder whose name finishes with .pretty.
So, create yourlibrary.pretty and mover your .kicad_mod file into it.
Now, with the footprint manager, add yourlibrary.pretty to your project.
And your footprint is ready to be used.
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i’ll try to do that
ty
well i tryed everything but apparently the only way is to use kicad 5
but I still don’t know how to import the .kicad_mod file in to a library
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My advice is to force your teacher to use v5.1. If not for other reason, at least because the poor students don’t easily get help for v4.
I, for example, have 5.0 (an old installation from somewhere), 5.1 (the current stable) and 5.99 (the current unstable development version) and I’m happy to be able to help every now and then. But I won’t go back to v4. And the UI for the libraries may have been different in v4, so I’m not even trying. For v5.1 I can try even things I don’t use myself just out of curiosity.
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The .mod file format was similar to the current symbol file format where one file represented many footprints (a full library was one file).
The new file format has one file per footprint and is in s-expression format. The library now is simply a directory commonly given the suffix “.pretty”.
Renaming the file will therefore do nothing. It might be a good idea to do at least a bit of experimentation before making a suggestion for a beginner.
@Giovanni i don’t have an explanation for v4 but the v5 explanation for adding downloaded assets is found here: How to get a downloaded symbol, footprint or full library into KiCad version 5? For footprints the process is identical (only the interface changed) Symbols are a different story.
And i would further suggest you check if your really don’t have a fitting footprint already in v4. There is a huge overlap in what was in v4 already. It could however be that the footprint had a different name.
Or possibly even take a similar footprint and adapt it for your needs with the footprint editor.
By the way the footprint name seems to come from the version 5 library (reasoning: it uses prefix P instead of writing out Pitch, this change was made with version 5). I kind of assume you were given a footprint name in the assignment as i doubt you would ask for a footprint of a given name otherwise. (Unless a fellow student made the schematic and you are now responsible for the layout) If your teacher really has given that name then they should either use the v4 libs if they work with v4 or update to v5 as suggested by @eelik and others.
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@Giovanni, is the footprint shared by @paulvdh the same as yours?
In that case it is v4 compatible. It only has 2 round pads.
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yes thank you, I made it. I only had to create a library for the file but I didn’t knew it because it was my very first time.
thank you all guys
When I started to be interested in KiCad it was 4.0.6 changing soon to 4.0.7. As I remember library management in V4 was less intuitive then in V5. But the footprints were in .kicad_mod files not .mod files.
Library management was equivalent on the footprint side for v4. Only difference was that the official lib still was using the github plugin so the github repo structure was insane as a result (and you got updates without user control by default)
I am however still confused why a version 4 project would require a version 5 file. Something fishy is going on here and just pulling in the file will just hide that fact instead of being a proper fix.
May be what I remember as less intuitive was a symbol management.
It wouldn’t.
Giovanni didn’t know much about KiCad, nothing about versions. He just picked the footprint up wherever he found it.
Well it seems i was incorrect from the get go. The version 4 repo has a footprint with that name in it: https://github.com/KiCad/Inductors_THT.pretty/blob/master/L_Toroid_Vertical_L16.5mm_W11.4mm_P7.62mm_Pulse_KM-2.kicad_mod
Seems like we had the Pitch prefix already shortened in that particular repo (so the old footprint repos were worse than i remembered).
Which means the user just needs to add that library to their setup via the library wizard (directly from gitlab or follow the local installation guide in How can i install a specific version of the footprint library?). So new assumption: this is a group project and there are differences in library setup as the different students are on different platforms or one student did some steps that @Giovanni did not follow (v4 is too long back so i can not remember if i needed to do something to get all footprint libs. I just know that by default only a small fraction of symbol libs was available.)
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