Transfer KiCad preferences between computers and OSs

Software
1

Today I was at my lab computer (running Linux Mint) and viewing a KiCad project which I had done on this Win10 computer. I would like to copy my preferences (particularly colors but…why not do all) for both schematics and pcb layout from this Win10 machine to the Linux Mint installation on the other computer.

Note: The Linux Mint computer also has WinXP and a partitioned HDD. If the recommended operation is just a file manager/file explorer copy/paste, I guess I could do it with either Linux or XP without KiCad running when I do it. I would think this would not be difficult but I have no idea whether Linux will fight me somehow?

2

Linux will not fight you. Just copy and transfer the files in any way you like.

Afterwards, chmod and chown the files so they have the same permissions as before.

3

Thanks but copy from what where to what where?

4

The settings locations are noted in the user manual here: KiCad | 6.0 | English | Documentation | KiCad

So, for 6.0, you’d want to copy the files in %APPDATA%\kicad\6.0 to ~/.config/kicad/6.0

Note that the footprint and symbol library tables are also stored here (fp-lib-table and sym-lib-table). You may not want want to sync these between computers, or you may want to, depending on your preferred library setup.

5

OK Thanks! Up until now I have never used or been aware of documentation for 6.0. Rather…been bumbling along. As much as anything, I think of that of my ability to do that as being a favorable comment regarding KiCad and this forum.

But I will need to search for ~/.config/kicad in the Linux installation…

6

In linux, ~ is just shortcut for your home directory. So if your username is bobz it would be /home/bobz/.config/kicad (at least on 99% of standard Linux distributions)

7

OK thanks again.

After some failed efforts, I managed to get this to work.

  1. In the Windows directory tree, there is the additional folder of “roaming”, in (me)>AppdData>Roaming>Kicad>6.0. I never understood the purpose of this folder name.

  2. I was unable to copy-paste from a zip to the folder on the Linux machine. The extract operation put the files somewhere (but I do not know where they went) so that also did not work. The only way I was able to do it was to have the zip and the target folder both open, and to drag from one to the other. Then acknowledge that I wanted to overwrite.

  3. When I re-launched KiCad after doing this and went to “open recent” it could not find the same project. I guess maybe that is a function of the recent project list being contained in the folder which I had just replaced…so that was a surprising one which maybe is OK.

  4. In spite of both computers having 6.0 nightly, the Linux Mint version indicates that the file was created by an older version of KiCad and would be updated on saving. This got me worried that I would be unable to pass the file in the other direction, from the Linux machine to the Win10 one. So (from the Kicad project manager) I saved the project as a new name onto my thumb drive and passed it back. I can open it without any issues on the Win10 machine. This is OK but has me puzzled.

8

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.