I’m new to KiCad, but I already like it more than Eagle (faster to draw a schema and layout). But the thing I do not like is the process of assigning the footprints to the parts. I mean I like the idea that they are separate, but I find difficult to find the necessary footprint. Most recent frustration was when looking for SOT223. So : is there a way (in cvPCB) for searching for a footprint? I.e. I hit ctrl-F, a window pops up, I input “SOT 223”, and all of a sudden the rightmost table (this with footprints) gets filtered? Or is there a better way to do this (i.e. good/common practice)?
Thanks for your reply. My bad I didn’t include the version. Version: 0.201504191001+5609~22~ubuntu14.04.1-product - I use latest nightly builds. Yes I did step 1. i.e. my problem is not that I have no footprints available. It’s just the opposite : I have so much of them, that I can’t find the correct one. To be more precise : if I filer by pads (3 pads) I have few hundreds, and if I filter by library which my component belong, then cvPCB shows a few footprints, but not the one I am looking for. So the next thing I do is to dig into more generic libraries such as “SMD housings” etc but again it has so many footprints!
I see. Your version is quite recent, so it shouldn’t suffer from a bug with the library filter. There was something unholy a while ago.
To be honest, if I’m looking for a certain footprint, I do a
find “…” | grep
in the library folder (local mirror of all github stuff) first, then, if I find anything useful, I add that library with the wizard. That works for me.
I made something like I mentioned above. Will test it tomorrow. The search is accessible from menu, but on the video I hit Ctrl-F, and then enter. I hope it will speed my project up, because I was a little stuck on this whole “footprint assigning” process.
