Hello,
I am pretty new to KiCad and a bit confused about the standard library potentiometer footprints: I have a Alps RK09K potentiometer in my layout, and the pin numbers of the footprint are not like in the datasheet.
I am not quite sure if this is a KiCad fault or everything is right here?
On the left you can see the datasheet, on the right the footprint in KiCad:
In my optinion pin 1 and 3 must be swapped in the footprint.
What do you think?
Best regards,
Florian
Hi,
I checked the datasheet, and yes, your snippet of the ds shows top view. You are right that far.
But: the footprint is nothig without the symbol. I cannot check KiCad right now, so do check yourself:
Has the symbol markings for ccw and cw positions of the wiper? I‘d bet it has.
And if so, do they correspond to the footprint?
If so, everything is fine as schematic represents the FP, dispite the fact that alps and KiCad count pins in a different manner. If not, I‘d assume there is a bug.
So, check that and come back!
KiCad has only pin numbers on the symbol. When I build the schematic and assume pin 1 in my schematic is pin one at the potentiometer (refering to the datasheet), it will cause errors…
But now I know that I have to pay attention to that 
A MR to fix this issue is open in GL so it is possible that an updated version will ship with the next release.
Persnally, I have created my own potentiometer symbol with an arrow, depicting CW rotation (for instance, pin 3 goes towards pin 2 when doing CW rotation). When I need to use this symbol in reality, I adapt this symbol locally (ctrl + e) to footprint pin numbering. There is no need to have bunch of potentiometer symbols, it is much faster to move appropriate pins (only three) according to footprint definition. One can argue that this approach causes danger when updating symbol from the library, but meh, blindly update batch of symbols from a library is a bad idea in overall: when I need to update, I do this precisely, one symbol at a time, double checking if old and new symbols are pin to pin compatible, to be error-free.
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