KiCad 6 is coming! (has arrived!!)

[gnuarm]

It just strikes me as absurd for blaming a user for the problems in software.   

Uh, so this is what you appear to be saying - if I know that a given program I am relying on doesn't autosave and I don't save as I am going along, it isn't my fault if it crashes and I lose my work. You don't see anything slightly absurd with that?

What ever happened to personal responsibility???

What ever happened to not putting works in other peoples' mouths? 

Should I invent something for how I interpret your post and question that?

OK, show me how I misinterpreted your comment.  I'm willing to learn.

Not going to engage in a pointless debate.  English is not an overly complex language.  What I wrote was clear.  What you wrote was your spin on it.  For starters you cut off most of what I posted. 

I'm not going around with you on this.  That would be of no value to either of us and not appropriate here.

[tbavcevic]

lets be clear i want kicad to work and be replacement for all people that have no money to buy altium or similar. but with behavior surounding it i am afraid it will never happen.

If your posts to the KiCad forum were all like the post above, I need not ask why you were threatened with a lifelong ban.

how is sincere feedback on bug report forums bad? should not they expect only negative feedback i n order to make it better, well i give only negative feedback on bug report forums (pun intended).

Well, let's think about it for a nanosecond...how's that their fault? Save your work frequently. 

i am paranoid and have double backups on different drives and sometimes triple for important stuff, save regularly and using ups for brownout protections but sometimes i waste few hours on something and finaly make board work and routable and then in second i would like to save pc freezes/eagle freezes or something else happens, but eagle leaves me with .bXX and .sXX autosaves that are somewhat recent and i need not waste more than few minutes and i am back in bussines exaclty where i left of, this is realy nice. with kicad if all is ok and saved on 4 places that is not guarantee that all data will be there! its absurd!

What part of Free don't you understand?
....

if some software is free does that mean that i am not allowed to say if it does not work for me? interesting concept, repeated on kicad forums each time someone asks why something does not work.

[Karel]

Here's how I deal(t) with it, both Eagle and KiCad.
I disabled the auto-save functionality.
I press ctl-s after making a (small) modification.
Every hour or so, depending on the kind of modification, I enter "git commit -a" and "git push" in the terminal.
I never forget it because I trained myself to do this and it became a habit and now I do it without thinking.
I never lost a (part of a) project.

You can create and setup free, private git repo's on Gitlab.

p.s. I have been using Alium Designer for a year (on windows) and it was much easier to end up with a broken,
non-functional schematic or pcb file.

[thinkfat]

lets be clear i want kicad to work and be replacement for all people that have no money to buy altium or similar. but with behavior surounding it i am afraid it will never happen.

If your posts to the KiCad forum were all like the post above, I need not ask why you were threatened with a lifelong ban.

how is sincere feedback on bug report forums bad? should not they expect only negative feedback i n order to make it better, well i give only negative feedback on bug report forums (pun intended).

Let's say your attitude towards the people who dedicate their time to improving it is a little strange. "It doesn't work for me so I'm either stupid (implied NO!) or it's badly designed!".

[tbavcevic]

but i am dedicating my time each major release with trying to get it work and fail each time, hence implied that i am either stupid or something aint right, maybe both.
can you answer how to get it working on ubuntu 20.10? or am i not allowed to say it does not work?

[gsocker]

but i am dedicating my time each major release with trying to get it work and fail each time, hence implied that i am either stupid or something aint right, maybe both.
can you answer how to get it working on ubuntu 20.10? or am i not allowed to say it does not work?

Probably, but we need more information from you. "Libraries don't work" doesn't provide much to go on.
Is the "Add Symbol" dialog empty (no libraries) when you try to insert components in a new project? Or is something else wrong?

[gsocker]

V5 has schematic/pcb autosave at a configurable time interval. I've used this before when KiCad or the computer crashes (or lost power)

In addition, V6 has configurable whole-project backup when saving. Optionally, it can also do so when the autosave takes place.
They are  stored in a 'backups' directory in the project directory as zipped files.

[tbavcevic]

both manualy added libraries downloaded from git and installed trough apt dont show up in schematic editor when pressing button to add part, i cant explain it any other way.
also there is no kicad folder in root/.config.

[Monkeh]

both manualy added libraries downloaded from git and installed trough apt dont show up in schematic editor when pressing button to add part, i cant explain it any other way.
also there is no kicad folder in root/.config.

Then you may need to configure the paths properly. Bear in mind they're not responsible for the mess your distro may make.

Also, why on earth are you running as root?

[gsocker]

both manualy added libraries downloaded from git and installed trough apt dont show up in schematic editor when pressing button to add part, i cant explain it any other way.
also there is no kicad folder in root/.config.

Then you may need to configure the paths properly. Bear in mind they're not responsible for the mess your distro may make.

Also, why on earth are you running as root?

Just tried spinning up an Ubuntu 20.10 VM and installing KiCad using the distribution packages. It's on 5.1.6 when the latest is 5.1.9, but otherwise started up file and did the normal auto-population of the symbol libraries when starting a project for the first time.

Running it as root using sudo also works fine (though I'd never actually use it like this).

[Bassman59]

Here's how I deal(t) with it, both Eagle and KiCad.
I disabled the auto-save functionality.
I press ctl-s after making a (small) modification.
Every hour or so, depending on the kind of modification, I enter "git commit -a" and "git push" in the terminal.
I never forget it because I trained myself to do this and it became a habit and now I do it without thinking.
I never lost a (part of a) project.

You can create and setup free, private git repo's on Gitlab.

p.s. I have been using Alium Designer for a year (on windows) and it was much easier to end up with a broken,
non-functional schematic or pcb file.

Really, how hard is it to type Ctrl-S (or Cmd-S on a Mac) after making a change, even a minor one? I’ve been in the habit of “save often” since the days of DOS.

There’s also a good reason for not using auto save: say you open the file to look at it for reference as you’re debugging. When you select things or change visibility, some programs “touch” the open file. You don’t want autosave to update a released file. And maybe you don’t want TortoiseSVN (or whatever) claiming that the file was modified and you should commit it.

[PlainName]

Really, how hard is it to type Ctrl-S (or Cmd-S on a Mac) after making a change, even a minor one? I’ve been in the habit of “save often” since the days of DOS.

Not difficult but a pain in the ass. I once found myself doing a save even after not changing anything merely because I couldn't remember the previous time I'd done it (a few mins before, likely). But this is all victim-blaming. You are saying people are at fault for not hitting save, rather than accepting that the software is at fault for obliging the user to allow for its brokenness.

Personally, I don't use auto-save ever (for the good reason you mention). I save after doing some reasonable amount of work that I am happy with - it is protecting against me screwing that up with my next mods. But sometimes I am 'in the flow' and make considerable changes over quite some time without a save. That's just how people do, or fail to do, things when they are focused.

If I use some software that requires me to make manual saves all the time because it is likely to crash (or otherwise lose data), I won't be using it anymore. Simple as that - it is shit software. The only exception is if something external to it (like the OS or another app) is causing the loss. The only reason y'all accept fault if you don't do regular saves is because you've allowed that mindset to take root.

[Karel]

You are saying people are at fault for not hitting save, rather than accepting that the software is at fault for obliging the user to allow for its brokenness.

I dare to say that an electronics engineer, who believes it's possible to write bugfree software, is naive.

No matter how hard you try, no matter how much money you throw at it, no matter how good programmers are,
it's simply not possible. Period.
Ofcourse, that doesn't mean that you are not allowed to criticize software. My point is, don't take any risks, save often and use git.

[janoc]

Running it as root using sudo also works fine (though I'd never actually use it like this).

Running as root using sudo and as an "regular" root (either by directly logging in or using su) is not quite the same - sudo will still keep all your environment, so e.g. $HOME is set to your regular home directory, only your effective UID changes. If you run as "regular" root, then your $HOME is typically /root, etc.

But yes, I do wonder why the heck is he trying to run this as root? I guess he likes playing with fire. Given this I come to think that his messed up config likely isn't a KiCAD issue ...

[PlainName]

Ofcourse, that doesn't mean that you are not allowed to criticize software.

That is the issue in this thread - the chap is being ostracised for perfectly valid criticism.

[tbavcevic]

...
But yes, I do wonder why the heck is he trying to run this as root? I guess he likes playing with fire. Given this I come to think that his messed up config likely isn't a KiCAD issue ...

ok lets start from begining,

first try
1. i go to kicad and follow instructions for ubuntu and add PPA
2. install kicad from software manager

no libraries

try x2, remove everything

1. reload ppa from terminal
2. use terminal to fetch all needed packages

in short this:
_{sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-5.1-releases
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --install-recommends kicad}

no libraries

searching around net, some people say go to root/ folder and remove kicad folder for help with this issue, there is no kicad folder there.

try x3

reinstall everything trough terminal commands like on x2, manualy download libraries from git and add them to my libraries folder, point to location of libraries in kicad settings(path config).

no libraries


as someone else said here do not put words in my mouth, and dont try to put this issue on me as there is a lot of users complaining about same issues over the nets and over time, even quick google search confirms that, there is one thread on this forum also even from 2017.


sorry if my engrish is not up to standard as it is not my native tongue and could lead to some misunderstandings.

only thing i have not tried yet is to manualy replace automatic downloaded libraries with ones from github in their original folders, i have not tried it yet as i use my secondary drive for projects and libraries as automatic backup is made on external drive, and in case i must use folders on os drive i would have to manualy copy that each time which is not realy fun but if it works who cares.

[thinkfat]

I don't quite remember how my first KiCAD install went, but I think you need to just add the libraries manually. I'm not sure if the Ubuntu install will do that automatically or not.
Adding the symbol libraries can be done in bulk, all of them at once. Same for the footprint libraries.

[woofy]

I'm running kicad 5.1.9 on ubuntu 20.04.1 (actually Mint 20.1). I don't recall having any problems with libraries, so I just downloaded a random one from github (an ESP32 module) and extracted the .zip.
In kicad Eeshema, I went to Preferences - Manage Symbol Libraries and clicked plus (+) to add a new library. Entered the Nickname, Path and Description and pressed ok.
Now when I try to add a symbol, I find the ESP32 library and can select the module.

So far (only a handful of projects) I've not seen a problem with libraries.

[tbavcevic]

I don't quite remember how my first KiCAD install went, but I think you need to just add the libraries manually. I'm not sure if the Ubuntu install will do that automatically or not.
Adding the symbol libraries can be done in bulk, all of them at once. Same for the footprint libraries.

this is help while i have been adding libs manualy you made me realise i was adding folder path like in eagle while kicad expects each library to be added separate, now it works and it even uses libraries on secondary drive without issue, now i can finaly test damned thing. thank you.

so it was dumb user error 

[julian1]

In debian default (kicad version is a bit behind), footprints, libraries, 3d models are separate packages, and can be installed individually. Not saying to use debian, but maybe another datapoint that helps..

$ aptitude search kicad | grep -v doc
i  kicad - Electronic schematic and PCB design software
p  kicad-common - Old common files used by kicad - Transitional Package
i A kicad-demos - Demo projects for kicad
i A kicad-footprints - Footprint symbols for KiCad's Pcbnew
i A kicad-libraries - Virtual package providing common used libraries by kicad
p  kicad-packages3d - 3D models for 3D viewer in KiCad's Pcbnew and Footprint Editor
i A kicad-symbols - Schematic symbols for KiCad's Eeschema
i A kicad-templates - Project templates for KiCad

[gsocker]

As a side note, you said you were looking for a config file under /root, so we all assumed you were running it as root. However, if you're running it as a normal user (the one you log in as), then the config file would be under your home directory, not /root.

[tbavcevic]

i just followed some online troubleshooting, and since i never used kicad on ubuntu before i do not know where config files would be.

i am dumb for this kicad i can even find out how to place component in schematics from parts browser, something changed ther from what i remember, this exercise is already taking too much time and effort for stuff that should be simple and normal.

[julian1]

I found this video really good, for a complete end-to-end walkthrough for a non-trivial board design.



The trick to know with Kicad is that when people say it is 'good', they mean that it is powerful and modular, works great with source-control/git, and has tons of community assets.

But (at least for me) I had to learn it, rather than just intuitively play around to get the hang of it.

[Monkeh]

I've never found any CAD tool to be intuitive. It's all complex software to achieve complex goals and requires a time investment to use effectively. Those unwilling to make a time investment will inevitably fail and complain loudly about how hard it all is.

[Karel]

https://www.udemy.com/course/kicad-like-a-pro-2e/

(No, I'm not affiliated to them.)