I upgraded, and it seems this release changed the default size and look for the capacitor and resistor symbols in the standard library.
So when I started eeschema and loaded a schematic that I was working on yesterday (using a July release 07-21 BZR5971), it popped up a warning that my schematic was built with older library parts, and showed me the cached part and the updated library parts side-by-side. This dialog is a "Rescue" dialog, it offers to clone my parts from the cache into a new library. It showed 4 parts had changed... R, C, CP and ZENER.
Since I did not want to clone my parts, and instead wanted to use the new parts from the new library, (the CP part was better, in particular), I unchecked all 4 parts and that would make it NOT clone the old parts from the cache, and instead load the new parts into my schematic.
Well it did this, and replaced all my resistors and caps with their smaller versions from the new library, but it left all the nets unconnected grrr.. I think I understand what they did here... it seems they standardized on the schematic symbol part size for all these parts now. This is good, but the tool just swapped the part in and left all the parts unconnected if they were different size (smaller now).
Clearly it needs to be smarter about this. I have to reconnect everything
See attachment.
I upgraded, and it seems this release changed the default size and look for the capacitor and resistor symbols in the standard library.
So when I started eeschema and loaded a schematic that I was working on yesterday (using a July release 07-21 BZR5971), it popped up a warning that my schematic was built with older library parts, and showed me the cached part and the updated library parts side-by-side. This dialog is a "Rescue" dialog, it offers to clone my parts from the cache into a new library. It showed 4 parts had changed... R, C, CP and ZENER.
Since I did not want to clone my parts, and instead wanted to use the new parts from the new library, (the CP part was better, in particular), I unchecked all 4 parts and that would make it NOT clone the old parts from the cache, and instead load the new parts into my schematic.
Well it did this, and replaced all my resistors and caps with their smaller versions from the new library, but it left all the nets unconnected grrr.. I think I understand what they did here... it seems they standardized on the schematic symbol part size for all these parts now. This is good, but the tool just swapped the part in and left all the parts unconnected if they were different size (smaller now).
Clearly it needs to be smarter about this. I have to reconnect everything
See attachment.
That's one of the things annoy me a lot about KiCad. Nets get unattached for whatever reason
I hope they fix it. .
I upgraded, and it seems this release changed the default size and look for the capacitor and resistor symbols in the standard library.
So when I started eeschema and loaded a schematic that I was working on yesterday (using a July release 07-21 BZR5971), it popped up a warning that my schematic was built with older library parts, and showed me the cached part and the updated library parts side-by-side. This dialog is a "Rescue" dialog, it offers to clone my parts from the cache into a new library. It showed 4 parts had changed... R, C, CP and ZENER.
Since I did not want to clone my parts, and instead wanted to use the new parts from the new library, (the CP part was better, in particular), I unchecked all 4 parts and that would make it NOT clone the old parts from the cache, and instead load the new parts into my schematic.
Well it did this, and replaced all my resistors and caps with their smaller versions from the new library, but it left all the nets unconnected grrr.. I think I understand what they did here... it seems they standardized on the schematic symbol part size for all these parts now. This is good, but the tool just swapped the part in and left all the parts unconnected if they were different size (smaller now).
Clearly it needs to be smarter about this. I have to reconnect everything
See attachment.
That's one of the things annoy me a lot about KiCad. Nets get unattached for whatever reason
I hope they fix it. .
Well, the reason in this case is pretty obvious: the new symbols are not as wide as the old symbols.
It's also a library issue, not a core Kicad issue.
Well, the reason in this case is pretty obvious: the new symbols are not as wide as the old symbols.
It's also a library issue, not a core Kicad issue.
Well, the reason in this case is pretty obvious: the new symbols are not as wide as the old symbols.
It's also a library issue, not a core Kicad issue.
The reason for the disconnect is clear, yes. The new library parts are smaller than the old ones. However, that does not make it acceptable, nor justifiable, to leave it like that.
How can you say it's a library issue, not a kicad issue? the Rescue dialog offers to give me the choice of keeping my old parts or switching to the new parts. When I decide to switch, it disconnects nets that were connected before.
I say it's a kicad issue since they should make a best effort attempt to reconnect nets that were already connected to parts that are being replaced. Maybe I'll make the code changes and submit the code myself, instead of complaining
In the Library manager load your whateverproject-cache.lib from your project folder. Then put it the first on the libraries list.
Eeschema will load that symbols first and the problems will solve.
I upgraded and didn't want to use the cached symbols anymore. So I said "No" to the question to use my cache, and instead I chose to use the new symbols from the new library, and it did that quite blindly in fact, and left the nets disconnected on the schematic because the new symbols were smaller (in length).
The new symbols still have 2 pins like the old ones, the nets should stay connected. That's my complaint. Especially in simple devices like R's and C's that have only 90-degree orientations, so wires generally come from the left or the right or the top or the bottom. Extending these wires to meet the new pins should be done in a best-effort manner.
However, I realize that changing this might be hard if it means a file format change to better support this use-case, which won't come up that often for 90% of the users anyways. Library changes like this are not done often enough to make it an issue worth supporting. There are, indeed, bigger fish to fry here.
So what is the situation with libraries now, have they got their act together and produced software that looks like i can stake my business on it [...]?
Nothing special with the libraries being online on a git repo. You can download them and use them offline as well.
Alexander.
I was using it happily and was going to use it for business until they redid the way libraries are managed and suddenly i didn't have any libraries as they were all pulled in from online or something and there were no instructions. I liked it as a program, but i need some security.
but when you see the whole software take a turn the wrong way you steer clear of it. No updates for years and no documentation of new features..... I'm glad they are back on track, might get diptrace to pull their fingers out of their assholes
Create and use your own libraries.
You can copy parts from community supplied libraries, you can make your own, you can hire someone to make the parts for you, but don't rely on any library you haven't vetted and can't control.
I basically expect only the basic stuff to be there in the libraries provided by the software. Standard resistors capacitors and inductors and JEDEC accepted footprints etc. Maybe 2.54mm and 1.27mm headers etc.
The situation would improve markedly if they just got rid of 95% of the footprints and schematic symbols, or exiled them to some legacy container. The existing libraries are chock full of truly ancient and obscure parts, like Xilinx Virtex-2, and a hundred-and-one versions of 78xx and 79xx regulators. None of this gets fixed/organized because it is exactly like documentation: the last priority on the typical engineer's list.