Hi,
it has been a while since I have used Kicad, and am now using version 5 for the very first time. Glad to see the progress made to date. I have a problem though, that I am fairly certain I have seen before, so it’s nothing new I think. When I am in the schematic and open the symbol Properties, I can then Browse Footprints. This brings up the footprint Library Browser as expected, with all the libraries listed on the left hand side. As I scroll down through the libraries however, every now and then one of the libraries will pop up with an error as follows:
Load Error
Footprint library path “/usr/share/kicad/modules/Resistors_SMD.pretty” does not exist
If I jump to another library and then back again to this same library, it doesn’t give me the same error, however no components are shown within the library. Meanwhile other libraries (a good example in this case is Resistors_THT.pretty) are found and operate just fine, and they are in exactly the same directory. To confirm I’m even looking at the same libraries and directories, I’ve even cut and pasted components from one library into the other, and can see them or not see them as expected. EG if I cut a component out of Resistors_SMT and transplant it into Resistors_THT, I then see the resistor in that library. So I know I’m not dealing with a good library in another directory or path.
Why are some libraries working, and not others? Note I did find one thing, which may be strange, or it may be normal and part of the means by which Kicad “marks” faulty libraries, I’m not sure. I noticed that once a library has been detected as not working, then thereafter, the path to that library is shown with a double forward slash. eg /usr/share/kicad/modules//Resistors_SMD.pretty.
I’m running on Ubuntu version 18.04 with modern hardware, and Kicad Verson 5 as mentioned.
There were some fundamental organization changes in the libraries, among them plurals were changed to singular. Unfortunately, the upgrade process doesn’t touch the user settings one of which is the global fp-lib-table (the table where your global footprint libraries are configured).
When did you download the libraries? I had some problems with the 3d stuff because the script pulling and compiling the zip files was timing out for some reason. They were recompiled manually yesterday. If you use ‘git’ then the problem is elsewhere.
Hi, thanks! That resolved the issue, and all libraries now work. I’ll probably still have to now resolve where my custom components are, and establish some new libraries I think. This is what I had to do last time, as Linux is not happy letting you edit/add libraries under the default directory where the standard install libraries are kept (Super User access required). This is not new to me though, and I can take care of this, but at least the libraries all make sense now even if it has been reset back to default settings as such. I opted for the second option in the link provided (thanks!) and just deleted the table.
To date I have not been that sophisticated in terms of using online libraries, and have instead opted to keep it simple. I use the default install libraries (formerly ver 4, and now ver 5) and then add my own custom components/libraries as and when I need to. Everything operates off my local drive.
Well, less of a ‘Linux thing’ and more of a proper procedure. Your changes would get over written if you changed the standard libraries anytime they get upgraded.