I set it up as DavidRSB suggested. Now I wonder when I’ll get some time to mess with it again. Of course, I still don’t have any data at home till Oct 2. Perhaps I’ll make a page on my web site with things I’ve learned about KiCad… Of course, that will have to wait until I know some things about KiCad.
Posted from a friend’s house where barefooted brats are allowed
Your layout seems to have all the bells and whistles.
That’s just because I’m dingy.
I want to rework part of the schematic a little, but as often happens when you’re excited about something and it’s starting to come together, I have to do something else and it might be a while before I get back to it.
Posted from a friend’s house where barefooted brats are allowed
I think I have it using local copies of the libraries. I guess the easiest way to test is see if KiCad works with internet disconnected.
Posted from the library where barefooted brats are not allowed
(But I’m cheating 
)
It’s not yet using local copies. If I go to launch PCBnew with no internet connection, I get an error box:
On the "Footprint Libraries Wizard, it keeps the path I put in for “Save a local copy to,” but it switches back to “Files on my computer.” This is what I want, right?
When I was last in this wizard, last time I snuck into the library barefoot, I clicked Next, selected all the boxes and downloaded the works. My folder has 84 subfolders. I’ll spare you the list.
Using KiCad 4.0.2 stable on Windows 10. Trying to be sure it doesn’t run me out of October data in a few hours like it did in September.
Posted from the library where barefooted brats are not allowed
Clearly, it’s not using local libraries: I went to pick an SMD diode footprint and it took a minute to get the list.
I must have gone wrong somewhere.
A picture is worth 1000 words. (But NOTHING beats real hardware!)
See atch.
Dale
Long past the barefoot-and-pregnant stage
Picture worth a few million words there.
I see. This is how it decides where to look for a footprint in the “Buttons_Switches_SMD” library.
I tediously re-arranged all these and… It didn’t stick. Oh, come one, I didn’t click “Cancel,” did I?
I’ll bet this is all cleverly stored in a text file somewhere. I managed to move Air_Coils_SML_NEOSID to the bottom and save it. Seems to have stuck. I’ll click the rest of these to reasonable places later. Out of time for now.
Posted from a friend’s house where barefooted brats are allowed
Pregnancy is highly unlikely, though people often think I’m a lady named Ruby Thomas. That comes with having a first name that sounds like a last name and a last name that sounds like a lady’s first name. Barefoot whenever I can get away with it.
the file you’re looking for is located at:
C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Roaming\kicad\fp-lib-table
My mind is somewhat fuzzy on this point. You may need to “Save Project” from the top-level KiCAD program window.
Just confirming - in order to work from local libraries (i.e., without an internet connection), he DOES need to get the local library paths listed higher in the library table, than the Git Hub paths. Correct? (I need to refresh my memory on this when I start a new project in a week or two.)
Yeah, I understand. My given name could be (at least in U.S. culture) either male or female.
Dale
Cool. Would have saved me lots of clicking.
Somehow, I only had a few libraries listed local when I got done with all the clicking, so I ran the wizard again and waited for much download, then went in and deleted all the github ones. Then I had to click “Save” and deal with the duplicate a few times.
I’l try it from home in the morning.
Posted from the library where I’m not getting away with cheating this time
This was supposed to be a quick and dirty project. I guess I got the dirty part right
I have used at least half a dozen EDA tools. They all have their shortcomings, quirks, inconsistencies, and aggravating behaviors. KiCAD may be a little worse than the others but it CAN be mastered! At least, I HOPE it can . . . do you think it would help if I scrapped my sneakers?
Dale
KiCad is not as polished as some of the commercial competition, but the forum community is a lot more helpful
And now it works offline. Cool.
I reworked my schematic a bit and I’m laying the board out again, now that I know a little more about what I’m doing.
This is true!
I have seen some company-sponsored “forums” (not necessarily in the EDA field) that were so heavily moderated and regulated that they became little more than a promotion and advertising medium for the company. It’s not like that here!
Dale
Yeah, it’s enough to make your forefinger raw and bloody. 'Course, some brat would probably do it with his bare toes just to annoy the adults.
There must be a better way to organize & re-arrange that table while working within PCBNew. If it’s not practical to have a command that moves a selected entry to a particular line-number, then how about buttons for “Move to top” and “Move to bottom” in addition to “Move up” and “Move down”?
Dale
Toes don’t have range of motion needed for effective mousing. I do pick things up with them.
Now, on the redrawing of the board, I can’t get my filled zone on the back copper to work. It doesn’t give me any fill in the print or the outlines around the other traces when I type B. I used the “Fill Zone” option in the right-click menu…
See, I’ve used Dale’s DPACK footprint, though the pin numbers were different from the footprint I used before, so I used a programming editor to adjust the pin numbers in Dale’s. I didn’t feel like right clicking all of those pads and going through the menu to change each of the independently.
Feet are bare, as they should be, of course
The screenshot shows a hatched green zone (=B.Cu)… is that the GND zone or something else?
Is there a pad/track with net GNDREF within that zone (and on B.Cu)? Otherwise it wont fill… as the Bat-1 pad seems to sit on F.Cu only.
Coming back to it later in the day, it seems to work as I expect. It even works not connected to the internet.
I think KiCad is quicker to use than what I’m used to. When you get it all laid out with freepcb, you then have to fiddle everything to pass DRC. Easier to get it right with KiCad, I think.
I have some open pins on the processor. I might add a button or two or bring them out to slobber pads.
Posted from a friend’s where barefooted brats are allowed
