when I make more than three footprint variants in a package only the first three show up in the menus in the board editor.
Is this intentional or a bug?
The example of footprint variants in the manual shows six footprints but actually only the first three seem to be accessible when you do this.
OK it turns out this is a glitch. The library wasn’t updating to the project correctly. After a reboot and using the update library function, all six of my footprint variants are showing.
The update library by itself didn’t work yesterday, but after restarting everything today and using update library again , then the variants do eventually show up.
Could be a mac M1 glitch with rosetta, I’ll keep an eye out for similar behaviour on linux when next I use librePCB on linux.
Maybe the background library scan was simply not finished yet when updating the project library. At the moment you saved the package after adding more footprint variants, the background scan should have started (indicated by a progress bar in the status bar) - as long as this scan is in progress, the project library updater might not pick up the new package yet.
In general I am having problems with things not seeing updated library items, even once the scan has finished. The scan seems to be taking 30sec or more, is it scanning the entire library again?
Could the scan be interrupted if I do something else while the scan is under way?
However things seem to come right eventually.
Yes currently all libraries will be re-scanned even if only a small change is made - maybe this will be improved some day but unfortunately it is not trivial to fix.
And if the scan is interrupted by another change, it will cancel and restart. Only when the scan completely finished, the updates will be available in the schematic/board editor.
I realised that I’m only using my own symbols and footprints now - I don’t need any other libraries.
so I removed all the other libraries except my own custom one, and scanning is now almost instant.
not really a solution, but it works for me for now.
actually I’m still having problems, even with instant rescan
when i change something about a footprint variant, it doesn’t update.
to recreate: (assume save at each stage)
make a full stack of symbol, package with footprint variants, and device.
put the device in a schem and then on a board.
change something about one of the footprint variants.
update the project library.
try to use the changed footprint - for me it stays the same as the old version.