KiCad 8.0 - Creating a new symbol

[Rax]

Hi all,
I’ve just installed v 8.0 - essentially jumping from an older v 5.x, and taking advantage of the wise decision to add a folder called “8.0” to all installation files, which helps maintaining older versions as is - and I’m trying to create a new symbol. Nothing too complicated, essentially a DIP16 IC that’s not in any libraries. Something I’ve done before in v 5.x.
When clicking on “New Symbol…” in the Symbol Editor, I’m getting an error stating “No symbol library selected.” And yet I think all paths are default, and I’ve selected the Global Library to include this newly created symbol.
Not sure what I’m doing wrong. Thank you for your input!

[paulvdh]

You have to select a library before you can create a symbol in it. But if you select a library ( Symbol Editor / View / Show Symbol Tree is on by default if you start the symbol editor) you still have the problem that KiCad’s own libraries are not writable.

To fix it, create a library first, it’s 3 menu entries above the “New Symbol”:

Apart from that, there are a lot of other ways. Previously created personal libraries can be used directly (older may have to be converted) and it’s possible to load a schematic symbol directly from the schematic into the symbol editor, modify it, and put the result back in the schematic. But it’s still highly recommended to learn to do some library management.

[jmk]

I suppose this is what you see:

You need to select your library from the displayed list, but as Paul says, you must first create a library that will be displayed in the list .

Before you create a library, you must create a folder with your Operating System so you have somewhere convenient to place your library.

A little thought should go into this because if you ever alter library places in the future, links to projects using symbols from your library already completed may be lost.

This FAQ hopefully explains the procedure.

I’d suggest finding a suitable place in your computer for personal libraries then:
Create a folder and call it something like “My Personal Kicad Libraries” then create three folders inside that folder and call them something like “My Symbols”, “My Footprints” and “My 3D images”.
Then, as you create Personal Libraries in the future, place them in their appropriate folders.

Note: when you first create a library, it has no arrow before it (see above). This only means that that library is empty.