I vaguely “remember” a (nightly?) version of KiCAD where one would see the symbol + footprint and even eventually the 3D model of a part upon selecting it.
Was that just a mock-up posted here as an image or reality at some point?
I’m asking because I got someone introduced to KiCAD and we came across this as a more comprehensive way to select parts instead of just going by the name in the symbol selection browser - i.e. similar to what one is visually offered at distributor websites.
Or is that already built in and I just miss the tree for the forest there?
not bad, but that’s just browsing the footprints + 3d models… we were looking at something that would go from the parts/symbols and show the associated footprints + 3d models.
Once you’ve opened the footprint viewer and 3D viewer they show other components while you browse through them. This also does not only work from Cvpcb, but also from other KiCad sub programs.
The main limitations is that you have to open these viewers once, and you have to put them in a place where they are still visible when they loose focus.
Is this “good enough”?
The following is a mock-up… I select a part/symbol in EEschema and then manually searched it in CvPcb to get the footprint and from there the 3D model - that’s what my friend is after. And I was under the impression that at some point in the past this was on the board… but can’t find it via search or what happened to it.
The information for the footprint and successive the 3D model is there obviously.
You might remember the advanced option of the symbol chooser that was introduced with v5 but got deactivated by default as it was unstable and the dev who made it no longer had time to fully fix it. See How can i assign a footprint to a symbol? for how it worked in v5 (it does however not include the 3d preview)
