I am making a board that has the same circuit a few times. The positioning of the footprints is important, so I want to copy and paste the circuits into their respective spots on the board. My issue is that I need the footprints to have unique identifiers on both the pcb and schematic.
I can copy the circuit on the schematic, but when I press update pcb from schematic it places new footprints for the new parts I added. Is there a way to tell kicad that the footprints already exist and quickly update the names and pads?
you could use the “update board from schematic” with the option “re-link footprints to schematic using their identifiers” checked.
background:
normally kicad has board/schematic in sync with internal UUID-numbers assigned to the symbols+footprints
so to be in sync both symbol+footprint need the same UUID
this is ensured with the normal “update board”-procedure
but if you add symbol+footprint individually into schematic+board (like your copy-paste action) than these are not synced together
to overcome this the mentioned checkbox allows the symbol<->footprint synchronization with the Reference designator. For this the symbol+footprint need the same Refdes (R123, IC234,…)
some hints:
first make sure schematic + board are in sync (run 1x the standard “update board from schematic” command)
than copy/paste your symbols/footprints
make sure the pasted versions have the same Refdes on schematic/board. Otherwise rename the copied symbols/footprints manually
now run “update board from schematic” again, this time with checkbox set.
try this first with only few added/changed symbols/footprints until you get a feeling for the functionality
run “update board from schematic” with checkbox unchecked at the end to be sure all is in sync. Additionally kicad saves this checkbox-state, and you don’t want that checkbox set on the next regularly “update board from schematic”-command
