I seem to recall that things started to work “the wrong way” [see below] at version 6; I know I’ve been waiting for a while for the KiCAD team to fix this, which in my mind is obviously and unambiguously a mistake / misfeature.
I’m talking about the selection of footprints or library symbols. If I want to assign a footprint to a symbol in the schematic, I do that from the Properties dialog of the symbol; browse footprints, and then I get this dialog:
The big “paper cut” here is that we have to select the library first; the search for the symbol name is restricted to the library that was selected; and it will do no search if no library is selected. In my mind, this is a gross misfeature that I think should be urgently fixed.
On top of this, there is the inconsistency; from other points in the functionality, we browse for a footprint and it shows a different dialog — one that works the way in my opinion is the right way. For example, if one clicks on “Add a Footprint” on the PCB, the following footprint browser dialog pops up:
One starts typing the name, and the list starts to narrow down; it will show items from multiple libraries if the matches for what the user has typed occur in different libraries. I will not claim anything about the aesthetic of this dialog compared to the other one; but functionality-wise, this is how it should work (in any case, this is a much better approach!). Same thing when one clicks on the Add a Symbol on the schematic: the dialog allows the user to search for a symbol name without first having to select the library/category.
Any comments? Is there agreement on whether this is a bug/misfeature, and if so, what’s its priority?