Edit: Rene beat me to it by 8 minutes, with the same answer, but a link with much extensive information & screenshots.
Hover mouse over Component. -> press “e” -> Select: Fields “Footprint” -> Clear the “Field Value” on the right, or use the “Assign Footprint” button to get a new Footprint with the “Library Browser”.
(With the 6 legged chip icon in the “Library Browser” you can view the 3D symbol of any selected Footprint in Real-time.)
Pleasy don’t pay too much attention if I type Stupid things. For some reason about 1 out of 40 posts I type are apparently sometimes being interpreted as “rude” whil my intentions were the opposite.
I’m saving all those links from that FAQ. They have been useful! Thanks Rene.
Paulvdh, thank you for the “shortcut”.
I’m having an hard time understanding the libraries “philosophy” because I’m confused with all the windows and menus about libraries. I mean Component Libraries, Footprint libraries, default libraries, custom libraries, search paths, libraries editors, footprint editors, library managers, footprint managers… Too much stuff to “ingest” at once! And probably I’m making a mess out of this!
For instance, does it makes sense that I create an empty Component Library file (project.lib) and add it to the Library Manager and then I add to that library, custom symbols I download from the internet to that library? I mean, I find this weird because I’ll try to add .lib files into another .lib file! Probably I’m getting this wrong!
Libraries, especially YOUR libraries, are probably the single most important aspect of the program. Some pros won’t use someone else’s footprints. It is that important to them. Their lively hoods depend on them. As such a level of complexity is inevitable. Work is being done to make them more understandable without taking away functionality. Hang in there. It all falls into place after a while.
Well, I’ve just removed things I’ve added to the library manager and things I’ve added to my project libraries and I’m trying to do things differently so that things makes sense to me.
Apparently I can create a symbols library and add symbols to that library. And I think I already did this part.
My question is:
the philosophy also applies to footprints?
Do I have a library for footprints where I can insert my footprints?
I have created 2 folders inside my project folder. One named Symbols and another name Footprints.
And now I have opened a symbol I had created before and added it to a new symbol library I saved in that Symbols folder.
Now I need to create a footprint to that symbol. Is this also done by creating a new footprint and adding it to a new footprint library? I’m asking this because I’m creating the footprint and it is asking me to select a library. And I’m not sure if this library it is asking, is the Symbols library I created in the above step or if it is a new and different library dedicated to footprints only!
Ok, I think I managed to set this correctly, or better, the way it makes sense to me but now I have this error:
What is wrong now?
I mean, I have created folders inside my project named ‘Symbols’ and ‘Footprints.prett’. I have saved symbols into one new library inside ‘Symbols’ and I have saved a footprint inside that ‘Footprints.pretty’ folder. I also added this new footprints library to the project and I get that error when I try to go to the window where we assign footprints to symbols!
It seems that KiCad is looking for: “/Footprints.pretty” int the root folder. Check your path names.
May I assume the missing “y” in your post is a typo?
Thank you for replying! I figured it out but cannot understand why. It was not the curly braces. The parenthesis are correct. It is just not accepting as local (only for this project) library! I removed it and re-add it as “Global Library” and it worked!
