Mounting holes, can't find any

Schematic Library Symbols
1

Kicad v 5. 0.0-3-g5ebb6b6 release. I have a board in pcbnew & all is well, except i want to add four mounting holes, these are to be used with GP2 pogo pin mounts.

I go to the library browser and select Mounting Holes, but then nothing shows up.

Why this happens I don’t know but I assume that there will be repository somewhere that has mounting holes, any will do as I can edit to suit the GP2, but when I try: https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-symbols there are no mounting holes.

After searching for several hours I can find nothing that points me to what I have done wrong in not having the mounting holes available in the library or why I can’t find what i need in a repository.

Can anyone please point me to a solution to my problem?

2

I think you are mixing up schematic symbols and layout footprints.

There is a library for footprint mounting holes. I add them directly into the layout.

But other people like the mounting holes also added into the schematic. In this case, you can use a 1-pin connector for the mounting hole. Then, the hole footprint must be asigned to it.

3

Thank you Pedro.

I may be mixing up schematic symbols and layout footprints

I would be happy to just add to the pcbnew layout, but where do I find the library for the footprint mounting holes? In pcbnew if I select add a component I get the library with Mounting_Holes in it, but when i click on it there is nothing. Do I access layout footprints in another way? The layer I have selected is the front silk screen and i have tried the copper, but I still don’t see any Mounting Holes, nor can I find them online.

I am probably confused but I can’t find a way forwards.

4

In the library “mechanical” there is a symbol “MountingHole”.
Assign to one of several footprints in “Mounting_Holes.pretty”
You can also place footprints directly in the layout, but they tend to disappear everytime You hit F8 in the schematic. You can avoid that by locking the footprints in the layout.

I’m not sure where I’ve got the mentioned librarys from. Had them for years. I’ve also made my own footprints for mounting holes, to control distance to copper zones, size of screw heads etc.

5

Thank you WillWelsh.

I could not find Mechanical but I found hardware and within there is a mounting standoff which is what I need, just adjusted the diameter to fit the GP2 pogo pin and that seems to have done what I need.

Still a bit confused over why I haven’t got all the other stuff but a solution is a solution. Thank you!

6

Tried a bit more to find the sources of the libraries, but no success. Probably downloaded from the interwebs somewhere. Probably this: https://github.com/alexisvl/kicad-schlib/blob/master/library/mechanical.lib

Good You found a solution. If You need it, I’ll happily share libs/footprints.

7

Thank you for taking the time to look.

For now I will stick with what I found as it seems to work and I am behind on the project so happy just to get on with this solution.

`Thank you!

8

In your system look for a folder named MountingHole.pretty. If it doesn’t exist or it is empty, download the library from https://kicad.github.io/footprints/

9

Now I have 5.0.1 installed (with libraries), but I suppose in 5.0.0 it was the same.
When I run Library Browser (from Footprint Editor or from PcbNew) I see many (about 100) footprint libraries and MountingHole (not Mounting_Holes) is one of them. This library contains over 90 footprints.

Are you sure you use fp-lib-table that come with 5.0.0 installation and not your old fp-lib-table?

10

This should not be required if kicad 5 has been setup correctly. I guess OP had kicad version 4 installed in the past and now has a mixture of version 4 and version 5 libs.
@aes you might want to read this: I had KiCad 4 installed previosly. Now i updated to v5. Now i have some problems with the library setup

Maybe also this: I installed KiCad 5 (under Linux) but there are no libraries. (The default option for sym lib table setup is disabled)

1 Like
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Yes, I had version 4 before and yes I have verified that I have Housings_DIP.

Fabulous to have the solution to fixing this problem which I will get to once I have this board done.

A huge thank you to all for all the super helpful contributions.

1 Like
12

Yeah, eventually (if you do more than about half a dozen boards) you decide that it’s best to create and maintain your own libraries. My collection of mounting holes covers several screw sizes, with and without washers, a few with copper pads placed to make a deliberate ground connection through the mounting hardware, and silk screen indicating the area covered by screw heads and/or washers. To get REALLY fancy, you could outline the mounting hole footprint with various silkscreen line styles (solid, dotted, dash, etc) to remind the assembler of the correct screw size.

Dale

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Am using 5.0.0. I could find no file or directory with MountingHole.pretty
in the name.

$ find ./ -name "*Mounting*Hole*.pretty*"
If I want to use any of the footprints from https://kicad.github.io/footprints/
where would I put them and do I need to use a special tool to tell kicad where they are?

14

This is already described in detail in the tutorials i posted above.

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