KiCad 5 #27 Importing Graphics to Make Footprints & Symbols

[@andregauthier4619]

Learning while smiling what a good motivation to listen to your tutorials!

[@simonndungu1196]

That was well detailed for Graphics covers everything in a very nice way. Thanks, John and your basement as well. Cheers

[@gideonmugo5797]

Awesome video. Great tips. I'm definitely learning through these videos. Thank you John.

[@JohnsBasement]

Glad you like them!

[@kasparneuenschwander9291]

Thanks for this very informative video. By the way: Instead of taking the detour with generating the netlist in EESchema and importing it in PCBNew, I prefer to use the button "Update PCB from Schematic". You have the same options as if you were importing the netlist, but it's faster.

[@jorgeferreira6727]

Nice tip! Thank you

[@jorgeferreira6727]

around minute 33: Better than a mounting hole, you can get single pads using the "test point" symbol in the schematic and associate it with one of a variety of "test point" footprints available in the default libs.

[@andymouse]

Cracking tutorial John, I love doing graphics and "fancy pants" stuff at the end of a design, I did it pretty much the same as you but where you copy and paste the mask layer I just duplicate the copper and push the duplicate to the mask layer, same net result. Using the slider bar to "tidy" up the edges I didn't see, so that's great, I haven't actually created a pad that shows up in the schematic yet but seems real easy just need to remember to get rid of the hash sign. Oh yeah the 5.1.2 searches are a little messed up, also I just downloaded "gimp" software, maybe a quick start vid ? perhaps some hints and tips about creating shapes and stuff in gimp that can be used directly in Kicad? or is it quite straight forward? say you had your maple leaf and you wanted that to be the shape of your PCB could you push it to the edge cuts layer?... spiffing stuff old chap! cheers

[@JohnsBasement]

I haven't tried it but I'm sure you can create a board outline from an svg or dxf.. I'll put that on my research list. ...hmmm, kicad might also have a dxf expirt it could do from the imported bitmap too (though it'd be better to just start with one if available.)

[@jorgeferreira6727]

I hope your manufacturer as a laser cutter for the stencil production. Usually its a puncher with only rectangles and circles to choose from. ;)

[@JohnsBasement]

This is a good point! As always, we must consider the manufacture-ability of the things we design. DFM!

[@brunolevx2696]

If you still didn't figure out how to change your logo symbol properties since: on the main kicad window, the second icon ( showing an opamp) is the symbol editor. open it, select you logo in your new lib then click on the symbol property icon ( opamp with a gear). There you can modify the name of your of your symbol, get rid of the # in front of the reference and even add a default footprint. You can also use the "save as" function to add it to another library. This can be useful to place all your logos in a single lib. Hope this could be of some help.

[@marceloandrade225]

Great!

[@JasonLeaman]

I wonder if the print issue is resolved ? I print all the time now and it works. Just converted to Kicad from eagle also..

[@JohnsBasement]

The general issues I had with printing in the past seem to have been addressed. However, images with an alpha channel (as shown around time 2:45) were broken (at least on the Linux releases last year (I don't have Windows, someone else can test that and opine here please.) I have not tested any since.

[@JasonLeaman]

@@JohnsBasement I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 and it's all working good. I could try this for you if you want and then print ? Also latest version of Kicad.

[@theCrazyFrenchGuys]

Can we use a complete circuit picture instead of a simple leaf ?

[@JohnsBasement]

As long as it has enough contrast you can use anuthing.

[@f6fvy]

FYI, the alpha channel bug when plotting seems to be already fixed github.com/KiCad/kicad-source-mirror/commit/0a6b1ea256e2756da4170a32f2914f78e8d7e45e It should be available in the coming 5.1.3

[@JohnsBasement]

Awesomeness!! You seem to be following dev activity WAY better than I. Am I the only one seeing rendering problems in the tree-views?

[@f6fvy]

@@JohnsBasement I guess it's related to the latency to complete the filtering while you're typing. You're typing too fast ;-) Maybe they should consider a (short) timeout before applying the filter. BTW, I also agree on the dimensions vs resolution issue in the bitmap to component module. I took the liberty of submitting a report. bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1832230

[@JohnsBasement]

@@f6fvy Patience is a virtue I know not of. 😂

[@JohnsBasement]

Actually, it is NOT a typing/latency problem. It must be an event handling problem with the update/repaint logic. I've had issues with such in the past. It only gets worse if multithreading is not synchronized perfectly. Adding things like a delay might band-aid it to some degree. But to fix this sort of thing requires an unwrangling of the event/callback and marking things as stale/dirty when a redraw/repaint is to be deferred. It could be a an issue with the wx library or its use by kicad. We'd need to study the source to know for sure... I'm doing my best to remain a user of kicad (opposed to a developer... for now anyway.)

[@f6fvy]

@@JohnsBasement Why not submitting a bug report with a short screencast demo ? It's the best way to get it fixed.

[@jorgeferreira6727]

After this video, any "ASCII art" freak will move on to "PCB art" :)