On 3 Oct 2007 at 16:57, Dan wrote: > These are many of the same complaints I've had. I filed a wishlist > request for this. > > The big problem is that, just like gEDA, kicad's components aren't > integrated enough. cvpcb shouldn't exist at all, and eeschema parts > should be associated with pcbnew footprints. Importing an eeschema > design into pcbnew should yield all the default footprints, which can > be changed on-the-fly to alternate footprints (SMT, different > orientation, etc.). There should be no reason to manually choose > footprints every time a design is imported into pcbnew. Kicad really > needs this if it is to ever compete with the professional packages. > > It would definitely be nice if they had a way of adding more parts to > the official libraries included with the main distribution. > > In eeschema, open the Library Editor. If you go to "Fields", one of the fields is the footprint. This is blank in the supplied libraries. If you type the name of a footprint, that footprint will then be applied to that part and will show when you run cvpcb. I think they didn't put a footprint in because there are so many for each part. For example, a resistor. Would you put 0805, through leads, 0402, 1205 or what ?? In pcbnew, footprints can be changed. Right click on the footprint and select "edit". You can then change to a different footprint for either just that instance or for all instances of that footprint on the board. For example, if you had resistors with 1206 footprints, you could change one or all of them to 0604 footprints.
Dave - WB6DHW <http://wb6dhw.com>
