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Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => KiCad => Topic started by: Red Squirrel on August 10, 2020, 01:46:59 am

Title: How do you copy a component from the standard library to a custom one?
Post by: Red Squirrel on August 10, 2020, 01:46:59 am
I like arranging pins on symbols to match the physical pins, as when reading a schematic it just makes it easier to refrence the pins physically vs what's on the schematic instead of having to keep cross referencing the numbers, counting the physical pins etc each time I'm looking back and forth.

Rather than create components from scratch I want to just take the existing ones and then just rearrange the pins and save it in my own custom library, that way whenever I have to do a clean install I can just re-import my custom library and not redo it all.

Problem is I can't seem to find an actual easy way to do this.   I found that if you do "copy" on the component in the side list, and then do paste into the custom library, it sorta works, but it pastes it twice but with a slightly different name.  But if you try to delete the duplicate, it deletes both!  So how do I go about doing this? 
Title: Re: How do you copy a component from the standard library to a custom one?
Post by: greenpossum on August 10, 2020, 03:19:54 am
Find symbol you want in symbol editor, double click on it, make changes, save as and specify your own library as destination.

Edit: if the alternate names are in italics they are probably aliases. E.g. 74LS14 could be an alias of 74HC14.
Title: Re: How do you copy a component from the standard library to a custom one?
Post by: Red Squirrel on August 11, 2020, 03:32:37 am
Tried that and it sorta worked but it does the same thing.  Is there a way to get rid of the aliases?  That's probably what's happening.
Title: Re: How do you copy a component from the standard library to a custom one?
Post by: greenpossum on August 11, 2020, 04:54:03 am
The aliases are part of the symbol itself and can be removed by editing its properties.