Yours looks similar to mine. I did not update my kicad for nearly a year now. (stupid fedora gets no new nightlies.)
If you look under /usr/share/kicad/library/ you will find that there are a lot more libraries than the 29 that are in the standard template. If you want to use all libs that are supplied with your kicad version you either have to add them to the template or add them to every project you create by hand.
Sadly yes. And i fear this will not change until we get the new library format where we will have a symbol library table similar to the footprint library table within the users personal profile.
I can (somewhat) understand someone having to add their own custom libraries to be available for a schematic, but I do not feel that having to manually add the default libraries should be necessary.
SoâŚ
I wasnât comfortable doing it, but I edited the /usr/share/kicad/template/kicad.pro file to include all libraries on my system:
So,âŚhas anyone found, how to âreally ADDâ - a simple âtwo-way switchâ (component) into a schematic in KiCad?
I canât find any mechanical switches in my KiCad 4.0.6. library list. Do I have to download the switches library separately?
I have seen, some of you have given links to download some switch libs. That is easier said than done, for a newbie in kicad. Please write it out in steps. - Such that,⌠when I hit âaâ in my schematic window, the âmechanical switch library listâ should appear, & the selected switch be planted into my schematic.
@bobc , - is right, please donât confuse and talk about the âfootprintâ at the same time, First let the component be captured into my schematic. We can later see how to get, or create a right footprint for it.
So,âŚcan anyone give the simple specific steps to get a switch component into my schematic?
Thanks.
In the top menu bar, select Preferences then Component Libraries.
This opens a new window with 3 panels. The bottom panel contains the directory paths of the libraries in the top panel. One of them is the standard path that was part of the install.
To the right of the top panel are the buttons Add and Insert; click one of them (âAddâ will put the new library at the bottom of the top panel while âInsertâ will place the library in the list where it is highlighted).
Navigate to the \share folder and select the âswitches.libâ file.
Use the Up or Down buttons to place the new library in the order you prefer.
Thanks, your patience helped me, get a switch somehow. It was tough. I have been using Eagle
since the last 6 years, & never imagined this kind of search had to be done here. For the veterans, it may be a joke, But it was really your DETAILED steps, that convinced me that, this must be the right way, or else, I was about to give up the search for a switch, & was thinking of making a ânew componentâ for my switch, using the schematic Editor. So,. thanks a lot. It saved me the trouble.
Pre-loading cypress, while not including switches seems a strange choice of default.
Has anybody found the limit on the number of libraries selected yet?
The problem seems to be that https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-source-mirror/blob/master/template/kicad.pro has not been updated in the last 2 years it seems.
the cypres lib did exist 2 years ago wheras the switches lib is a newcomer. @SchrodingersGat should the library team ensure that this file is kept up to date? (Do the developers even wish this file to be updated with the library?)
Changing this sort of default is only easy when there is a major release.
Where did switches.lib come from, is it a rename or a split?
There must have been basis switch symbols somewhere before
Originally the switches where in device.lib
I think around release 4.0.5 the device.lib got split up a bit. (It got to large to handle. Reason: one file per lib, lots of merge conflicts)
In which case it should really have been added as a default. Removing one of the more obscure defaults to make space is not too bad, so long as this is made clear in the release notes.
Having a couple of pages in the documentation summarising what is in each library would be helpful