Project from template, folder selection, error [solved]

Software
1

Hi,

In a nutshell I can’t get the new project from template to work.

If I select ->New Project from Template I then navigate to C:\Program Files\KiCad\share\kicad\template and select the folder Arduino_Mega.

I then get a nice little dialog box that brings up the Template selector. If I click on the MEGA and OK, I get an error saying
Problem with creating new project from Template.

I think this was because it was trying to write files into the program files folder and it does not have permission.

So I copied the complete template folder to another location. If I then do the whole New project from template, it is the same as opening the project up. It just loads the complete Arduino Mega.pro. I assumed it was supposed to copy all the files and settings across and re-label the project to my new name?

Am I missing something?

2

You do it the wrong way around afaik.
The folder you select when you use the ‘create from template’ is not the folder where you search the templates - this folder will be your projects folder, just create one and then hit ‘select folder’. You’re then greeted with the template selector, that perfectly knows where the templates are and is able to find them itself :wink:

PS: yeah, it’s fugly.

2 Likes
3

Hahahaha thank you. I can’t believe I didn’t try that… and I even read the manual too…excuse me whilst I go bang my head on the wall.

4

Maybe you can help me too Joan_Sparky. I have created a new folder on D drive as in D:\AD_KKproj\ New_board after clicking new project from template. So far so good. I now get the template selection page which has the new project location, even if I select the User Templates tab. I navigate to the user templates file and select the template folder (only one in there). Then I get the error message:
“can’t open file ‘C:\Users\admin\Documents\KiCad\Templates\Tis Template\meta\meta\icon.png’ (error 3: the system cannot find the path specified.)”
"Failed to load image from file “C:\Users\admin\Documents\KiCad\Templates\Tis Template\meta\meta\icon.png”.
Failed to load image from file “C:\Users\admin\Documents\KiCad\Templates\Tis Template\meta\meta\icon.png”.

This is not suprising as the folder is “C:\Users\admin\Documents\KiCad\Templates\Tis Template” where the .pro .sch .pcb files are and a sub folder meta with the icon and info files. Why does it search for meta\meta\icon.png etc.

My info file is here copied from notepad++:

Tis Template

This template contains set up forMy standard PCB tracks etc. It also adds my preferred libraries.

Do I need anything more? I am at a loss as how to get templates to work as in the book.

Any help would be appreciated.

5

Is that a [Space] in the path?

6

Hi. Thanks for your very rapid response.

No spaces. Just the way I typed it in this window. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I have found the issue now after lots of mucking around.

The default path is C:\Users\admin\Documents\Kicad\template but my files were in C:\Users\admin\Documents\Kicad\TIS_Template which caused all kinds of strange things to happen.

The templates files have to reside in C:\Users\admin\Documents\Kicad\template\My_Template1 Where My_template 1 is the folder with the pro sch pcb and meta sub folder in. My_Template2 would also be in the template folder with another set of files pro, sch, pcb and meta sub folder etc.

Now it seems OK

Start KiCad / New project from template/ make new folder for project with project name as folder name
and select folder. This is a little confusing as the default seems to point to the templates folder.

Once that is done, the Template window starts with 3 tabs, System Templates (empty, path = C:\Program Files\KiCad\share\doc\kicad\template) User Templates (path = C:\Users\admin\Documents\Kicad\template) or Portable Templates (path = C:\Program Files\KiCad\share\kicad\template) where the supplied templates that come with Kicad are stored.

Provided the user template files are in the correct place, the icon appears and the user template can be selected by clicking on the icon.

The manual does not describe this very well (I downloaded this last week and it seems to be the latest issue: KiCad dated 09 Sept 2017 but that may be the downloaded date rather than release date). It suggests that the icon is optional, but it seems to be essential, other wise there is nothing to click. The optional item is probably a .png of the board. For my purposes this does not exist. I am only trying to set default libraries for eschema and track widths / drawing preferences for PcbNew.

In the manual, the Project Template selector shows the supplied templates in System Templates, whilst at least under windows, they are in Portable templates. The project template path has no templates (C:\Program Files\KiCad\share\doc\kicad\template) It would appear that the path may have changed since the documentation was produced.

All very confusing, and that does not take much for me these days!

Finally (I hope), I would like to set the default width for the dimension drawing in PcbNew, but there is no obvious way to do that. Is this possible? Default pen size, board edge and outline do not seem to affect this setting, and it is not carried over from the template. Any ideas?