Switching Computers, Setting Up KiCAD fresh

I’m switching computers, and I’ll have to reinstall KiCAD again from scratch. Since I’m doing so anew, I was wondering what kind of tips/suggestions you might have when starting a fresh install?

Also, one thing that concerned me with KiCAD was that every time I start a new project, I had to add library paths to where my custom parts and footprints were for each individual project. Previously, I’ve solved this by putting my parts and footprint files in my KiCAD share files in C, but because of that, every time I have to edit a part, I have to run KiCAD as an admin. Is there a way to work around this?

Never touch the KiCad’s installation directory (Program Files\KiCad). Put your own libraries to a folder where you can access them as a normal user.

You can add your own libraries to global library tables instead of project specific tables.

Where can I find those global library tables? That might be the solution to my issue, but I don’t see it in preferences.

In Preferences->Manage Footprint Libraries or Manage Symbol Libraries there are two tabs, one for project specific libraries and one for global. Add to global and they are saved to you personal global configuration in the same library table than where the KiCad’s own libraries are defined.

See Library management in KiCad version 5.

Thanks for the link. It’s really helpful, though it seems more in line with a Linux OS rather than a Windows OS. How do I change what KiCAD sees as my ‘Home Directory’ in Windows?

See the Appendix in the article.

If you copy all your KiCad files in the same directory structure as at the old computer you can copy the files from C:\Users\Your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\kicad directory from old computer to new and all settings (like global library lists) should be like you have set it at old computer.

Note that AppData\Roaming is meant to be attached to the user profile anyway — so if you use a domain controller to synchronize user accounts, this should happen automatically.

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