Problem loading footprints in cvpcb

These .pretty’s show up in the err msg:

Housings_TO-50
Power_Packages_ThroughHole
Crystal_Oscillators_SMD
Housings_TO-78
Transistors_SMD
Pentawatts
Housings_SOT
Transistors_TO-220
Oscillator-Modules
Capacitor_Elko_ThroughHole
Housings_ROHM
Housings_SOT-23_SOT-143_TSOT-6

And they are all in your list. Pin_Headers is not in your list but in cvpcb it shows up consistently as being empty. Other libs, mine and those on Github, are sometimes showing their contents and at other times not. I could kind of understand it if only Github libs were erratic, I can put that down to somebody working on them, but my libs are local and they share the same random behaviour…

In the meantime is there a setting I can clear so that cvpcb does not go looking for libs that are no longer there?

For info, this part of the message comes from an assert() type macro. It’s the name of the source file and line number of the file on the user’s system where the binary was compiled. The function “remote_get_zip” is trying to retrieve the repo from github, and getting the error.

I don’t know why this would affect local libraries though.

I have the same problem but it is limited to the SOT-23 housings.

How do I update my library definitions so that I have the most up to date references?

Is there a searchable table on the kicad library web portal that states which patterns can be found where?

thx Bobc, that is more or less what I figured out except for the compilation bit. I didn’t… I downloaded the binary. Another thing I’ve just discovered is that though a lib’s contents may not be visible in cvpcb I can access it in the footprint editor. So this morning I copied two pin headers to one of my “always visible” libraries and I was able to get them onto the pcb.

I’m also having a problem all the sudden with cvpcb not loading correctly.

When I try to open cvpcb from eeschema I get the following errors.

And then when it does open there are no parts in alot of the libraries.

Is there any specific recommend solution for this?

I have a few board designs that I made with this version of the software so I’m hesitant to install new software that might screw with loading my previous designs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Some of libraries were removed from github (footprints moved to another libraries) so they are “not found”. To fix the problem the libraries should be removed from your footprint library table (Preferences -> Footprint Libraries Manager).

I think that much better solution is to remove the default footprint library table that uses libraries “online” and download libraries from github using Preferences -> Footprint Libraries Wizard.
Using libraries “online” is dangerous because they may change without notification.

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@michal777

So this is good advice here also? : https://acassis.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/fixing-kicad-library-not-found-issue/

Thank you RWB that was exactly what I was looking for.

If you fix it as in


the libraries are still “online” - which is bad (I think).

Okay… couple of questions then:
1> Won’t I miss any future changes, such as this recent change, in the libs if they are local?
2> How to download and make them local?
3> Do I have to download ALL libs? I don’t use a lot of them. For example - The Valves lib. I don’t use valves, but in the future I might make an amp that uses valves - what to do?
4> This is all about the footprints, is it the same for schematic symbols?

Having this problem in OSX, but it’s making kicad completely unworkable, as the error window goes off screen, so it’s not possible to say exit out of the window. The window is also not re-sizeable.

Here’s what it looks like one my screen:

Anybody have a work around? The blog post linked earlier does not help.

@skaevola The escape button does not delete the window?

@RWB No, it does not. The only thing I’ve been able to do is force quit out of Kicad.

@skaevola Can you change the screen resolution just long enough to click out of it.

Can you hit TAB to end up on the button you can’t see below then hit the Enter/Return key to close the window. In windows you hit tab to select different buttons that are open.

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@RWB Good idea, I was able to close out of it after rotating my display to be vertical (because it’s a very long dialog box…) Thanks.

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To fix you can remove your fp-lib-table (file installed with kicad with list of the libraries).

The issue seems to be that RC2 was built on 10 November.
On 17 November, the fp-lib-table.for-github was changed in Kicad-Library, commit message “Remove the deprecated pretty libraries for the KiCad 4.0.0 release”. Thus causing RC2 and ALL previous versions that use github libraries to have this error
Then, it was announced that 4.0.0 is released, but binaries are not provided.
People download and install RC2 thinking it is the stable release.

So unfortunately Kicad team have encouraged people to download a version that is not only not the latest, but have also introduced a last minute change which breaks all previous versions. Way to go team :smile:

When the real final version is packaged, it should pick up the new fp-lib-table from kicad-library.

In the meantime, if you are using the standard fp-lib-table, copying from https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-library/blob/master/template/fp-lib-table.for-github should remove the errors. If you have a modified fp-lib-table, you will need to do some sort of merge, but remove references to the deleted libraries.

I haven’t tried this yet … I was waiting for the release version before jumping in the deep end.

The KiCad installer will keep the old fp-lib-table in place if you install the actual 4.0-stable. The nice thing about this is that if you have modified your fp-lib-table, you don’t have to reinstall these libraries. However because of this change in the github-libraries anyone upgrading from recent nightlies will probably run into this issue. You can easily fix this by either deleting \AppData\Roaming\kicad when you install 4.0-stable or renaming this folder, and then merging the old table( just merge the extra libraries you included yourself) and new fp-lib-tables.

(NOTE this is for windows, I don’t know how it works exactly for other platforms)

This is actually not an issue when upgrading from old-stable or earlier because, in those versions no information was stored in \AppData\Roaming\kicad

I’m not sure if this helps anyone, but I ran into the missing footprints problem as well. I tried everything that I read about online, and nothing seemed to help. It wasn’t until I followed the advice to use local libraries that one problem was evident – you have to restart KiCad after making changes to the fp-table or it continues to look for them online. So now what I did was to create a local folder, then git clone everything that I use in projects there. Then I included all of those folders with the library wizard. After restarting KiCad, cvPcb opens without errors and all of the expected footprints are present.

I got mine working. I re-imported the libraries through Preferences->Footprint Libraries Wizard (in the Footprint Editor). Then I deleted the libraries with patterns that weren’t found (in Footprint Editor -> Preferences -> Footprint Libraries Manager). Then I removed the associations to the components that used those libraries (Eschema->Tools->Assign Component Footprints). It took a few times of opening and closing the ACF tool before I didn’t get any more errors. Then I assigned the new footprints found in other libraries.

I have a totally standard packaged install running on Windows 7 that I installed back in August.