Is there no way to rotate a schematic symbol 45 degrees?
I have a fair number of schematics I’ve digitized for reference that have bridge rectifiers comprised of four individual diodes. It’s surprising that there is no 45-degree diode symbol in the library (especially since I can think of two other applications where having such a symbol would be useful).
I know the next step should be to roll my own, but I don’t see how I can draw 45-degree lines in the symbol editor?
There are many ways to do this very easily with schematic symbols or footprints by simply using the mouse to highlight the component and you then press ‘E’ for Edit and you will be given options for placement, for more options simply highlight and right click the mouse and more precise control of orientation will be offered there.
Is there no way to rotate a schematic symbol 45 degrees?
No. Because doing so would end up with the pins positioned offgrid - you would loose existing wire connections and would not be able to connect something to that 45° rotated symbol.
There are a bunch of bridge recitfiers in the “classical 45 degree” orientation in KiCad’s default libraries. Just search for “bridge”.
In the symbol editor, you can easily draw lines under any angle. It’s just graphical lines. The only important thing is to keep the attachment points of pins on a 50mil grid for compatibility with the schematic editor.
The pins of schematic editor are a bit complicated. The easiest way is to use a very short (or even zero length) pin, and draw the rest as graphical lines. This mostly depends on how you want the visibility of pin numbers and names.
Personally I do not like the “classical” representation of a diode bridge rectifier very much, because they need quite a lot of space in both X and Y direction. My own preference is to draw all the 4 diodes pointing (cathode) upwards , and then connect the AC wires to the centers.
Ooop’s my bad 
Just a moment of thought and of course I messed up. 
paulvdh: If I was designing something, sure, I’d prefer to use an integrated symbol and packaged rectifier, but my intent was to be able to transcribe schematics of boards that have individual components (and designators) for the bridge rectifier sections.
Anyway, I eventually found another part that was already 45 degrees and some monkeying around gave me this:
So, I guess I need to apologize for the wasted bandwidth…
You didn’t need to modify another symbol. It already exists in the standard library, under Devices. There is also a filled version.
And there are some ready-made diode bridges, but they are single symbols of course.
Also there are a handful of other 45 degree symbols in Devices, R, L, C and LED.
I just looked, and no, it’s not in my library… 
Well you don’t have the standard library for v7 then.
My version info: Application: KiCad Schematic Editor arm64 on arm64
Version: 7.0.8, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.2
FreeType 2.13.0
HarfBuzz 7.3.0
FontConfig 2.14.2
libcurl/8.4.0 (SecureTransport) LibreSSL/3.3.6 zlib/1.2.12 nghttp2/1.55.1
Platform: macOS Version 14.2.1 (Build 23C71), 64 bit, Little endian, wxMac
Build Info:
Date: Sep 29 2023 12:23:42
wxWidgets: 3.2.2 (wchar_t,wx containers)
Boost: 1.82.0
OCC: 7.7.0
Curl: 7.77.0
ngspice: 38
Compiler: Clang 13.0.0 with C++ ABI 1002
Build settings:
KICAD_SPICE=ON
Symbol, footprint and 3D model libraries might be in separate packages, I don’t know how they are packaged for MacOS. But as you can see in my screenshot I got D_45deg from the standard library. I can count the number of symbols I made on my fingers and toes and this is not one of them. (I also have zero cymbals, and my neighbours are happier for that. 
)
Edit: As you can see from here, it’s in the Gitlab KiCad symbol repo, and I think has been for a long time.
They do not exist in my library (Ubuntu for Linux Mint Download).
If I ever needed symbols on 45° I would make them.
You too have a deficient setup?
$ grep D_45deg /usr/share/kicad/symbols/Device.kicad_sym
(symbol "D_45deg" (pin_numbers hide) (pin_names (offset 0) hide) (in_bom yes) (on_board yes)
(property "Value" "D_45deg" (at 1.27 0 0)
(symbol "D_45deg_0_1"
(symbol "D_45deg_1_1"
(symbol "D_45deg_Filled" (pin_numbers hide) (pin_names (offset 0) hide) (in_bom yes) (on_board yes)
(property "Value" "D_45deg_Filled" (at 1.27 0 0)
(symbol "D_45deg_Filled_0_1"
(symbol "D_45deg_Filled_1_1"
(symbol "LED_45deg" (pin_numbers hide) (pin_names (offset 0) hide) (in_bom yes) (on_board yes)
(property "Value" "LED_45deg" (at 1.27 0 0)
(symbol "LED_45deg_0_1"
(symbol "LED_45deg_1_1"
(symbol "LED_45deg_Filled" (pin_numbers hide) (pin_names (offset 0) hide) (in_bom yes) (on_board yes)
(property "Value" "LED_45deg_Filled" (at 1.27 0 0)
(symbol "LED_45deg_Filled_0_1"
(symbol "LED_45deg_Filled_1_1"
$ rpm -qf /usr/share/kicad/symbols/Device.kicad_sym
kicad-symbols-7.0.10-lp155.61.1.noarchIll try to cope with my inferior product. 
7.0.10 on Ubuntu 23.04, the only 45degree part is a switch
That’s the part I modified into the diode. 
These were merged pretty recently, so they’re new in 7.0.10.
Wow I’m more up to date than I realised. 
I’m actually in the anomalous situation of still runing 7.0.9 apps because the packager for my distro hasn’t updated those packages yet, just the library packages.
I’ve downloaded 7.0.10 and will install it after I finish updating two schematics.
