Saving a copy of a project

Software
1

Hi,

I’ve been using Kicad for a few weeks now, and I think it works great.

However i have a simple problem that drives me crazy:

I want to keep my project (schematic with hirarchy) as it is now, and create a new project starting from my current one as starting point.

Where is the ‘save as’ function? I can’t find it in the project manager, or in schematic editor…

2

‘Save as’ has been disabled when programs are run from the launcher. You can access it if you start eeschema / pcbnew directly.

3

Hi Madworm, thanks for your reply.

I tried opening eeschema directly without the launcher. I see no ‘save as’ function for the root scheet and subscheets.

I can only do ‘save current sheet as’.

Do I have to save and rename each and every subsheet and rework the subsheet symbols to have correct file names? What a hassle!

4

I think I found a solution:

  • copy the whole project folder and give it the name you want
  • you cannot rename the project file or any of the project members(schematics, pcb, etc). If you open the project file in the renamed folder, all referenced project members have identical names as the originals, but are the copied ones in the new folder

it’s not pretty but it’s what worked for me

1 Like
6

There is an option to archive a project (in the project manager: File > Archive, or use the toolbar icon), which creates a zip of all relevant project files. You could use this, but copying the files in the folder to a new folder like you said pretty much does the same thing and skips the zip and unzip steps.

7

I know that this is an old topic, but it came up at the top of my search. I was wanting to take an existing project of mine, and make a new project out of it. The new project is going to have many similarities, and it would be the quickest way to get started on the new project. I don’t really want the project and file names to be the same as the old project. It takes a little work, but overall I don’t think that it was too bad.

My project has several sheets. Fortunately for me, all my sheets began with the same name… like “BVS_01_MPU.sch”, “BVS_01_Memory.sch” and “BVS_01_IO.sch”. I used Notepad ++, Find in Files to search for “BVS_01” and replace it with the new name I wanted. This took care of all the references inside the files. Next I used a utility call “Bulk Rename Utility” by TGRMN Software to rename all the file names from “BVS_01” to the new name.

That was it. I opened the project and everything had the new names and opened fine. I hope this helps someone else out.

8

Reference to others dredging up these old threads:
There is a project called “KiRename” which may help with renaming old projects.

Disclaimer: Never used it myself.
Advise: Use it only on a copy of a project. :slight_smile:

9

And another thing to remember is that 5.99 has “Save As” (project) functionality.