Editing a footrpint from the current board

[Art]

If you attempt to edit a footprint from the current board (Ctrl-E), the footprint is opened with all the editing that has been done at the board level (i.e. position, appearance and text of reference and value fields). This reduces functionality of the shortcut. If you attempt to save such footprint into a library, all the data fields will be save with that editing. For example, if your components reference was U5 it is going to get saved as U5 in the library, instead of REF** One can say that you are just editing the specific footprint of the current board and not the footprint from the library. I don't see a lot of utility to such approach.

There might be some isolated cases when this can come handy, but as a rule I would rather drive the layout based on the library footprints and have a shortcut when I can rapidly access a footprint from a design and open it from the library without trying to find which library it belongs to and then go find the library and then try to find it in the library. It would be even better if the library that the footprint belongs to was already selected when I open it with a CTRL-E shortcut, so all I would have to do after editing a footprint would be hit "Save to the library" and then update the footprint at the board level.

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

Please add version info.

[Art (diametrix)]

It's not like it is a bug report, this logic has been there forever. Nevertheless, as you wiiish...

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Version: (2017-11-24 revision a01d81e4b)-makepkg, release build
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    Boost: 1.60.0
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[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

5.1 has an Edit Library Footprint... button in the properties dialog.

[Art (diametrix)]

@Jeff

I take it you didn’t really read the description. If you use Edit Library Footprint button, you have. To go through several steps. You have to find the right library, then you have to find your footprint in that library, which is not always easy. It would be much easier if you could get there by right clicking on the footprint itself

[Maciej Suminski (orsonmmz)]

@Art

I think Jeff's suggestion is actually what you are expecting, just try it. In the Footprint Properties dialog, there is a button named 'Edit *Library* Footprint...' which will let you edit the a library footprint rather than a particular instance on the board. There is no browsing through libraries, you simply get the corresponding footprint opened from a library.

Are you asking for a dedicated hotkey or a right-click context menu entry for this function?

[Art (diametrix)]

I misunderstood. Yes, that button does exactly what I needed. In a way of suggestion, I would propose changing option in the hot key list from "Edit with Footprint Editor" (default Ctrl+E) to Edit Library Footprint. There are some rare cases when you need to edit the footprint just for a single board, but for the most part editing footprint and then saving it to the library, rather than simply updating the board with the changes, is much more common.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

Rather than change the current ctrl+e behavior, why not just use a different shortcut like ctrl+alt+e to edit the footprint in the library? I'm not sure that updating a footprint the footprint in the library is actually more common than updating the footprint on the board. I never update library footprints this way. I only update the footprint in the board due to a layout specific issue which I would likely not use any where else.

[Art (diametrix)]

That’s fine too. You can always re-assign those. My point was mainly about adding that option to the hot key list.