I’m ready to rip my hair out, because I don’t understand how this thing works. KC 5.1 My desire is to alter a library footprint for a capacitor, because the silk screen outline is too large. On the silkscreen layer, I altered the outline by both altering the properties of existing segments as well as drew some new. I Saved As the footprint in one of the user libraries I created. When I reload the new footprint, half of the changes I made are shifted to a seemingly random offset in the X direction when I reload what I thought I saved. All of the items are there in the correct size - just not the place they are when I saved it.
Showing something could help. Could you take a screencast video of editing and saving the footprint and attach the result footprint here?
When there is any concern of a possible bug, always add full version info (Copy & paste from the About box).
That said. From where I sit, it may just as well be simple human error.
For example: You may have saved an intermediate edit of your symbol, and accidentally skipped to save the last version of your capacitor, or you saved the last version in a different library.
But this is of course all guesswork. Stating you’re ready to pull your hair out suggests you’ve put quite some time into into it and am getting desperate. You already having personal libraries suggest you have previous experience in this area.
I have mostly accepted that I am a fallible human. I even suspect I make an above average number of such silly mistakes as I mentioned above. With things like this I usually just shrug my shoulders, throw away the faulty component and start over. Modifying a simply cap is less than 2 minutes work if you know in advance what and how you want to change it.
I am all for the cause being human error here. I am a newbie. (5.1.5)-3 and I only found out I am using “Legacy Toolset” (if that matters) when I went to place vias. I bet someone is going to say “don’t do that” but understand I just laid out my first two schematics and boards and am using what works. The footprint editor I am having some frustration with for some reason, compared with the other tools. I made my own library because the ones I got from elsewhere are read only. “Save As” does not seem to work as I expected. Here is the library part on top, my modification on bottom (same pin spacing, changed the hole size, altered the coordinates in properties of the two ends and horizontal segments, and redrew the diagonal segments and leads. It looks fine when I choose “Save” and then when I re-open it looks like the bottom, partially shifted to a place it never was. This is the F.Mask layer, courtyard and Fab turned off.
The advice to just go from scratch is pretty darned good. No, I didn’t think of it. Use what works.
I began being interested in KiCad (v 4.0.6 those time) because of Push & Shove routing demo I found. It works only in Modern (F11, F12) Toolsets. I have read that (old) Legacy Toolset will be deleted. So, as Push & Shove was the only reason for me to start using KiCad, I was working in Modern Toolset. In 4.0.7 to do some tasks I had to switch to Legacy, but since V5 was released I had no need to go back to Legacy. I got into some problems as if after installation I went directly to footprint editor (not using schematic) the Legacy was default (what I didn’t noticed) and some things was not working (I reported a bug, or was trying to report and found that it was reported by someone else).
As Legacy is to be deleted I suggest to not use it. May be really no one uses it and if there are some bugs they could be not noticed.
“Legacy” toolset is (…Edit: Mostly obsolete, Rene (below) knows better than I do) mainly to be able to do “something” while your PC is having troubles. For example faulty Graphics drivers with no OpenGL.
Maintaining your own libraries is the normal way to work. The default are read-only for a good reason. It’s because they are not supposed to be modified by users 
A possible cause of your confusion is that all used footprints are also in the KiCad PCB file itself, while editing symbols is done in the Footprint Editor. There are options to update your custom libraries from the Footprint Editor (and from the Library Editor). But if you only update your libraries, then the PCB still keeps on using the previous Footprint. What happens if you:
Pcbnew / Tools / Update Footprints from Library…
and then experiment with updating Footprints?
No that is the fallback mode of the modern toolset (also called cairo).
The legacy toolset is simply the toolset that was there before the guys at CERN added the modern one. It did not get any new features since sometime during the v4 development cycle. This toolset is therefore missing quite a few features (example no interactive router).
The modern toolset was missing a few features during v4 which is why it was the default back then. Now with v5 it has everything that was worth keeping. Which is why the modern one is now the default. Legacy is now really only kept around as long as there is no work required to do so (which is why quite a few Linux distros come without it).
Ah ha - I learned something by revealing more about my situation, and I can see there is a lot more to learn. I took PCBnew out of the equation Paul, but I appreciate the issue you addressed. What I did yesterday is I went to the Footprint Editor, opened the footprint for a smaller TH capacitor (since what I desire is a smaller package silk screen outline), and Saved As it to my own library. I opened the one in my library, moved Pad 2 to be the desired spacing, and then dragged the group of the silk screen of the package and two leads over to center between the pads. Then I deleted the two leads, and redrew them the correct length. Then I dragged the + symbol over to near the case outline. I saved this. When I reopened, the case outline and + symbol were shifted in X a seemingly random amount (like the diagram above), as in my original issue. I then said “this isn’t working for me” and created my own footprint from scratch with no issue. For what it is worth, when I installed KiCad a week ago, it was in Legacy Mode - I don’t believe I changed that, and I did not know about it. It is an amazing program and hey it is free to boot - I have two boards completed. Thanks again for the help and tips.
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