Replace footprints in-place as edits?

[biggestsonicfan]

Greetings,

So for consistency of refdef label placements, I created copies of a component (C_0402_1005Metric) into a new library with “C_0402_1005Metric_SSLT” or “Silk Screen Layer Top” and did this for various positions of labels. This allowed me to change the component’s footprint on the schematic and “Update PCB with made to schematic” and labels which previously overlapped would be fixed.

However, now when I generate my BOM, it lists these custom footprints as their edited names, and that’s not something I really want.

Can I take the footprints I have in place that are currently on the board, assign them back to “C_0402_1005Metric” on the schematic, and have the edited positions of labels applied to them as if I had used the manual “Open in Footprint Editor” to keep my changes? Or am I going to have to revert all the components and edit them all individually?

[paulvdh]

The names of Footprints are not really suited for the BOM. It sorta works as long as you’re not too critical, but when you want to go beyond that, creating a separate field for ordering information is probably a better step.

One ( or a few) step(s) further is the database library system. This does take some work to setup the database, but in the database you can add ordering information, possible substitutes, pricing and much more.

[Tojan]

if you have them in a different library anyway you can give them exactly the same name as in the other lib without problems as kicad distinguishes footprints based on the library_name:footprint_name combination.