Kicad no libraries

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andrewwalker27 · Post by **andrewwalker27** » Sun Sep 23, 2018 2:06 pm

I've decided to abandon Eagle due to Aoutodesk's takeover and thought I'd try to get to grips with Kicad. As version 5 is now out, and it looks a bit better that older versions,I tried the tutorial but I'm stuck at the first hurdle!
I've created a new project and opened the schema and a requester popped up about a symbol library table so I picked the default 'copy default global symbol library table' as recommended but nothing appears in the library when I go to add a component.
I've installed the kicad-meta-5.0.0 so it all should be there and the libraries seem to exist in /usr/share/kicad/library but nothing appears. I've checked the path and the following exists

KICAD_SYMBOL_DIR /usr/share/kicad/library

So it should work.
When I go to 'manage symbol libraries/global libraries/' it shows /home/fred/.config/sym-lib-table, I'm assuming this is my user config file, can I edit this to point to the correct place?
Is there a more simple fix? The kicad forums are full of these problems but no definitive answer as most of them refer to version 4, does anyone have any solutions?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sun Sep 23, 2018 2:20 pm

andrewwalker27,

kicad has been modularised.

Code: Select all

$ eix kicad
* app-doc/kicad-doc
     Available versions:  4.0.7 (~)4.0.7-r1 (~)5.0.0 {html +pdf L10N="ca de en es fr id it ja nl pl"}
     Homepage:            http://www.kicad-pcb.org/
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools manuals

* sci-electronics/kicad
     Available versions:  4.0.7 (~)5.0.0 {debug doc examples github i18n libressl minimal +ngspice +oce +python L10N="bg ca cs de el es fi fr hu it ja ko nl pl pt ru sk sl sv zh-CN" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7"}
     Homepage:            http://www.kicad-pcb.org
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools

* sci-electronics/kicad-footprints
     Available versions:  (~)5.0.0
     Homepage:            https://kicad.github.io/footprints/
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools footprint libraries

* sci-electronics/kicad-i18n
     Available versions:  (~)5.0.0
     Homepage:            https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-i18n
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools GUI translations.

* sci-electronics/kicad-meta
     Available versions:  (~)5.0.0 {doc nls}
     Homepage:            http://www.kicad-pcb.org
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools (meta package)

* sci-electronics/kicad-packages3d
     Available versions:  (~)5.0.0
     Homepage:            https://kicad.github.io/packages3d/
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools 3D package libraries

* sci-electronics/kicad-symbols
     Available versions:  (~)5.0.0
     Homepage:            https://kicad.github.io/symbols/
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools symbol libraries

* sci-electronics/kicad-templates
     Available versions:  (~)5.0.0
     Homepage:            https://github.com/kicad/kicad-templates
     Description:         Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools project templates

Found 8 matches

Do you have all the bits you need?

andrewwalker27 · Post by **andrewwalker27** » Sun Sep 23, 2018 9:21 pm

Yes, all were pulled in by the kicad-meta package.

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Wed Oct 03, 2018 10:09 pm

I just checked my kicad setup. I have a locally cloned instance of the git libraries to keep them up to date.

KICAD_SYMBOLS_DIR = home/.../kicad_sources/kicad-symbols
KISYS3DMOD = home/.../kicad_sources/kicad-packages3D

I just installed the meta and pointed back to

KICAD_SYMBOLS_DIR /usr/share/kicad/library/
KICAD_TEMPLATE_DIR /usr/share/kicad/template
KISYS3DMOD /usr/share/kicad/modules/packages3d/
KISYSMOD /usr/share/kicad/modules

I had to remove and re-add within PCBnew for the 3d pretty files but apart from that, all appers fine.

can you see any symbols?

from within Eeschema under symbols library, does it list the libraries?

andrewwalker27 · Post by **andrewwalker27** » Thu Oct 04, 2018 3:49 pm

It seems that sym-lib-table doesn't get populated for some reason, all I have in /home/user/.config/kicad/sym-lib-table is one line

Code: Select all

(sym_lib_table
)

despite selecting the option to copy the default libraries. I've got another Gentoo box that it seemed to work correctly on so I'll just copy the file over and hope that works!

andrewwalker27 · Post by **andrewwalker27** » Fri Oct 05, 2018 9:01 am

Damn, fixed that problem, now no footprints! Looks like a failure of everything to do with libraries. Is there any way to rerun the script which copies the libraries? I'd like to run it through a console to see why it's failing.

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Fri Oct 05, 2018 4:25 pm

why not just delete the .config/kicad directory and let kicad repopulate aspects of it
Then you can go into kicad + eeschema + pcbnew and add the relevant directories/files

andrewwalker27 · Post by **andrewwalker27** » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:18 pm

That was the first thing I tried with exactly the same result, no libraries or footprints!
I've solved it by copying /usr/share/kicad/template/fp-lib-table and /usr/share/kicad/template/sym-lib-table by hand to my home directory ~/.config/kicad/ and it's now ok. No idea why it didn't do this itself though!

RayDude · Post by **RayDude** » Sat Nov 30, 2019 6:12 pm

andrewwalker27 wrote:That was the first thing I tried with exactly the same result, no libraries or footprints!
I've solved it by copying /usr/share/kicad/template/fp-lib-table and /usr/share/kicad/template/sym-lib-table by hand to my home directory ~/.config/kicad/ and it's now ok. No idea why it didn't do this itself though!

Thanks for this.