Problem loading footprints in cvpcb

Software
21

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.

22

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

23

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.

24

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.

25

Silly me. I just found that in Cvpcb, you can just go to Preferences -> Footprint Libraries and then do what you normally do in the Footprint Wizard. If you do it in Cvpcb, the changes take effect immediately and you don’t have to restart Kicad.