Hi! I am new to Kicad and learning to use it for an independent study at college. I have been going through the Kicad mini tutorial on the wiki and I have looked at the FAQs, but I have been having some issues.
1. Considering that Kicad has you put down a diagram of the chip on the schematic first with out associating a chip package to it (i.e DIP or QFP) how do I know that when I set the association in CVpcb that the pins will be correct since pin numbers can change drastically between packages for the same component. The components you use in the schematics generally have the function of a pin and its number on them, but I don't see how CVpcb will know how to reassign them if you choose one package as opposed to another. In the tutorial it does say there is some file that can describe the associations, but it doesn't say what that file is. Any clarification on this subject would be appreciated. 2. I downloaded the version of Kicad that is supposed to have libraries, docs, etc., already loaded in it, but I seem to be missing some things from my installation. For example, in the mini tutorial you need a to use the 16dip300 footprint, but this is not in my list of footprints in CVPCB. Furthermore, it says that you can narrow down the available options by selecting filter footprints, but not one component I have looked at has had any filters on it. In other words, for every component I have tried from the preinstalled library, the filtered list is exactly as long as the unfiltered list. Was there a different package I was supposed to download? I downloaded KiCad-2009-02-16-final-WinXP_full_with_components_doc_autoinstall.zip from http://iut-tice.ujf-grenoble.fr/cao/ If this is not the version with complete files then please let me know, or if it should have worked I would appreciate any advice about what might have went wrong. 3. Also, on the subject of narrowing down footprints to use, I wanted to know how I would figure out what footprint a chip had if the library did not include a list of options, or if I wanted to make a new library myself. Some information is obvious, like if a chip has 16 pins and is a DIP than that is easy to figure out. But, using the example I asked about previously, how would I know to use the 16dipâ300â footprint? It may be the case that that particular question is moot if that is the only kind of package (i.e. there is no â400â) but what I would like to know is generally whether the information will be in the datasheet for the component, or if there is someplace I could look on the internet to learn about these footprints. Thanks for all your help and expertise.
