Hi All,
I wonder if someone has put together a “standard” library that users can import and use out of the box with a good selection of components. The MASSIVE bridge rectifier was a real show stopper for me on the stock library. I know there is that site http://www.kicadlib.org/ but it seems to be all over the place.
Thoughts?
Cheers
BeJay
There is new effort from kicad team to assemle the libraries in new *.pretty format, their github adress is https://github.com/KiCad
There are two sets of libraries involved in KiCAD, this post is about the schematic parts.
The PCB footprints have recently had an upgrade to a much more manageable format which is what the *.pretty libraries are.
However the schematic components still use an older format where they are all lumped together in one file. Reading the developers mailing list the eventual plan is to move the schematic components to a similar format to the footprints, but this looks like it could still be a fair way off.
Personally I agree, the default libraries are a bit suspect and one of the many changes I’ve made is to reduce the size of the bridge rectifier. The trouble is that because they’re all muddled up in big files of components, it is relatively difficult to pick and choose parts you’ve modified and parts from the standard libs.
A few years ago now I forked the standard library and have been keeping my own copy with modified parts on GitHub https://github.com/hairymnstr/ndkicadlibrary I tried a merge last year some time to get a few of the new parts, but generally I work on my own set of libraries.
Of course this means every time I install or update KiCAD I have to take care to pull in my personal repository. Fortunately all KiCAD files are plain text so they work nicely in GIT.
Interesting, I forked your repo to take a look if you don’t mind 
I still have my own libraries for Protel98, so I thought it would be time to go open source. Thanks for your input regarding this, so I will definately check out Nathan’s library for a start!
How do we work with this *.pretty library? The footprint libraries are in *.kicad_mod format which my KiCAD doesn’t recognize.
*.kicad_mod is the “new style” footprint file.
Earlier this year (and for some time preceding that) there have been major changes to the “back end” of KiCAD/pcbnew to make it more modular both for better maintainability and for enhanced features. One of these changes was replacing the old library file format with a modular “plugin” based scheme which can get a list of footprints with one method (e.g. by listing a directory or using the GitHub API) and then fetch a single footprint from that list. Currently the standard build of KiCAD ships with 5 “plugins”, KiCAD (*.pretty/*.kicad_mod), Legacy (reads old *.mod files), GitHub (uses GitHub API to get *.kicad_mod footprints directly from the internet), Eagle and GEDA (converters for other footprint formats).
I’m not sure when the new format was included but it may be you don’t have a new enough build. To check, open pcbnew and click the “Preferences” menu. If you see a setting at the top for “Library Tables” then you should be able to use *.pretty folders as libraries by adding the path and using “Plugin Type” KiCAD. If that option isn’t there, you have an old version which can’t support the new library format.
This new one footprint per file format is brilliant for future footprint libraries because you can now download a single footprint and drop it into a *.pretty folder and use it in KiCAD without having to add a whole new library or merge existing ones.