I can’t make heads or tails of how the new KiCad 5.0 edited symbols are to be saved. I have created a library with the “Create a new library” icon for my personal symbol library “named.lib”. I have a capacitor symbol named CAP that I want to save, but when I use the “Export symbol icon” KiCad wants to put it into a single symbol library “CAP.lib”, whereas I want to put the CAP symbol file into the “named.lib” library file. How do I accomplish that?
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Export symbol is definetly the wrong tool. It is meant to export single symbols (Hence the name export symbol)
When creating a new symbol you will either be asked in what library to put it or kicad will put it into the currently active library. (Depinding on whether a lib is already active)
To ensure a symbol is placed into a specific library you can leftclick on the library name -> new symbol. A more detailed answer is provided in this post of mine. (Click the link or the small triangle in the top right corner to see the full post.)
I was running into a similar issue today, I was updating one of my older designs that references a library I no longer use but have archived. So of course I needed to move some of the symbols into the new library.
Previously you could open the library and then change the active library and save if I remember correctly… there are certainly post on the forum indicating this. The only way I could figure out around this in 5.0 was to export each symbol I need one at a time and reimport them in the new library. It would be nice if there was a more obvious way to do this.
Read the post i linked above. I detailed how you can achieve this in a faster way then exporting every symbol.
I don’t see what you are talking about. But no matter.
I was coping from an existing library to an existing (no longer used) library… there does not seem to be a way to switch active libraries without clearing the current symbol. To save into the new library as you used to do.
Now that I’ve looked at this I clearly overlooked that you can copy and paste symbols between libraries. It’s just different than 4.x… no big deal.
Rene,
I am using KiCad 5.0.0 on my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS operating system. To clarify you state “When creating a new symbol you will either be asked in what library to put it or kicad will put it into the currently active library. (Depending on whether a lib is already active.)” I am not creating a new symbol, I did a search by entering “cap” into the search box and that is what is in the editor window. Now I want to put this symbol into the library I created previously. You state “To ensure a symbol is placed into a specific library you can left click on the library name -> new symbol.” Where is this? I do not see this functionality. The “Save current symbol” icon is grayed out. Need more specific instructions, please.
I have detailed this in the pos i linked. Did you read that?
It’s about footprints not symbols, but I will read it over again more carefully.
Last two paragraphs in the post that Rene linked to:
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Whew! I finally got it figured out. Thank you so much. Here is what the problem was: You stated “Left click the symbol -> copy.” What you failed to state is that after “Left click the symbol” name you then have to right mouse click the symbol name in order to bring up the secondary menu, from which you then choose, with left mouse click, “copy” or “paste” or whatever. It’s like telling someone to change a flat tire without telling them where the spare tire is, where the jack is, and where the lug nut wrench is.
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