I am using KiCad 5.0.0 on my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS OS and came across the following anomaly: I edited and saved two symbols to my personal library. Added these two symbols to my Eeschema project schematic. Saved the schematic, went and did other things, reopened my project schematic and the two new symbols I had added were now boxes with two question marks. How come? I added one of the symbols from my personal library again, deleted the box with two question marks, moved and attached the added symbol to the circuitry. I immediately saved the schematic and got the following:
“Errors occurred creating symbol library/home/larry/Me10019/Me10019-cache.lib” with the following details:
“Symbol Melib:3.5_mm_w_2_SWs not found in any library or cache”. This same line was repeated twice more.
What is meant “…not found in any library…”? I just added it from my personal library and it’s there!
What is going on?
It might be that kicad does not like the space in the library alias. Edit the symbol library table and give the library an alias without using whitspace characters. (To manage libs go to eeschema -> preferences -> manage libraries)
If this is indeed the problem then it is definetly a bug. The library manager should not allow you to set the libraries alias such that it creates problems.
In Eeschema I went to the “Preferences” tab and then to “Manage symbol libraries”. There are two two tabs that are “Global Libraries” and “Project Specific Libraries”. The “Global Libraries” screen has “File: /home/larry/.config/kicad/sym-lib-table”. The table headings are “Active”, “Nickname”, “Library Path”, “Plugin Type”, “Options”, and “Description”. There are 185 rows or listings, Nr 1 thru Nr 182 all have a Nickname (some with underscores, some with hyphens, and some with both). The “Library Path” for Nr 1 thru Nr 182 is “${KICAD_SYMBOL_DIR}/‘Nickname’.lib”. The “Plugin Type” for all Nr 1 thru Nr 185 is “Legacy”. The “Options” column is blank/empty and the “Description” column has a description except for Nr 183, 184, and 185, which has none.
Row 183 is “Melib”, “/home/larry/Melib.lib”.
Row 184 is “dk_Modular-Connectors-Jacks”, “/usr/share/digikey-symbols/dk_Modular-Connectors_Jacks.lib”.
Row 185 is “dk_Barrel_Audio_Connectors”, “/usr/share/digikey-symbols/dk_Barrel_Audio_Connectors.lib”.
The Project Specific Libraries tab has “File: /home/larry/Me10019/sym-lib-table”. This has the same headings as for the Global Libraries but there are no listed libraries. Seems like there should be the project cache library. How come there isn’t?
Sorry i interpreted the error message wrong. I thought the the lib had the nickname Symbol Melib. (So Symbol space Melib, which could have made problems.)
Can you share your project including the library?
Rene,
I have searched on the Internet and looked at the online documentation but I can not find how to export a project. Under the “File” tab there is Import Project but I can not find anything about exporting a whole project. The files I have for my project are:
Me10019.pro under which are subfiles of
Me10019.Kicad_pcb
Me10019.sch
3.5_mm_stereo_jack.lib
Me10019-cache.lib
There shouldn’t be anything in the Me10019.kicad_pcb file as I am only working on the schematic diagram (schematic entry). And I don’t know why the 3.5_mm_stereo_jack.lib file exists–I didn’t put it there.
I would think the only files you need are Me10019.sch and Me10019-cache.lib, is this correct? What files do you need and how do I get them on to this forum? I’ll try this and see what happens
/home/larry/Me10019/Me10019.pro
Regards, Larry
Make a zip archive of the project folder and drag and drop it into the answer field.
AudioInterface.zip
Okay, let’s see if this works.
The archive is empty (Holds only one folder with 0 bytes)
AudioInterface.zip (10.9 KB)
Is this any better? I did a recursive zip of the directory Me10019 that should have captured all of the subfiles.
To: Rene_Poschl,
Are you or anyone else looking at my problem? Would like to know the status. Or should I resubmit?
Thank you–Larry Joy
Can you please post the Melib.lib that’s under /home/larry/?
I somehow expect it doesn’t contain the missing symbols and you had a different library selected when you created/saved them.
PS: it’s a good idea to create a subfolder(tree) in home/larry/ for all your personal libs.
Something like /Kicad/symbols and /KiCAD/footprints and /KiCAD/3dshapes and adding those paths as your MYpathXY to the KiCAD environment.
Let’s see if I can make Ubuntu work to post the /home/larry/Melib.lib file:
Melib.lib (3.5 KB)
That has appeared to have done it. Hope this helps in your trouble shooting for me.
And thanks for the suggestion on how to arrange my library files. I wasn’t sure about how deep to go in the path. I did download the Digi-Key libraries and I see they were put under something like /usr/share/.
…
There is your problem I guess.
Some parser somewhere seems to have problems with that vertical slash. Better do not use it in symbol/part names.
Okay, thank you for your observation. I have not made any changes yet but will do so to not use the vertical line. I had tried to use a forward slash “/” at first but the program would not accept it and would alert with a dinging sound. When I entered the vertical line there was no warning and the program accepted it. Perhaps the programmers should revise the code to check for additional non-acceptable characters.
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