designkicadpcb-design
I'm doing my firs PCB design, and I've choose to use KiCad.
The problem that I'm encountering is that when I look at my board in 3D view, the components' designators does not appear to be on the silkscreen by default (or maybe the 3D view doesn't display them ?)
Is there an easy way to add components designator on silkscreen without adding them manually one by one ?
Here is my PCB layout:
And here it is in the 3D view:
PS: The "Input" designator is added manually by me.
The workflow in Altium which I got used to for 2 years was that when you make a custom component, you make all the stuff at once - the schematic symbol, then a footprint, and assign pins etc. which makes sense to me.
The workflow in KiCAD which I've been using now for about 1-2 weeks is totally different. You do the schematic, and have schematic libraries, and then you make a net list and assign footprints. The footprints may not exist yet, so you can make them at this point if you have not already made them. You can do altium-like workflow if you try really hard, but KiCAD does not make it easy, and documentation/YouTube videos are all using old versions so you can never really get a good concrete way of doing things. That is the glory of an ever-changing open source project.
There is a magical footprint wizard which has an icon up the top in the footprint editing program in KiCAD. The footprint wizard was useful to me to make SIP pin headers quickly. There IS a QFN footprint maker in the wizard, but maybe not a QFP - have a look.
Otherwise I suggest you learn how to make a footprint pad-by-pad, and using the datasheet by the manufacturer and their "suggested pay layout" which is almost guaranteed to be there, or it's a standard footprint diagram you can get from elsewhere.
The easiest way to do it in KiCAD is to set the "user grid" to the correct X and Y pitch so that you can just plop down the first set of pins, and then change the grid again to get you to the side set of pins, and then top, and then the remaining side. The problem with KiCAD is it's hard to measure stuff, and the grid settings are so awkward to get to, but you always have to use them - there may be hotkeys you can bind.
As far as I know you can't do anything about this in the library, but in the PCB layout, you can open the properties for the component and select the 'Hide' option under the Designator section. That is the default designator properties. Any additional string you add in the PCB library with .Designator as the text will appear as and where you place it in the PCB footprint, even multiples.
Best Answer
KiCad treats the designators differently than the normal silkscreen (not sure why), but as long as they are visible (right click, select "visible" - it looks like yours are set to "invisible") then they will be on the final gerber.
Any text set to invisible can be set not to show by selecting the "render" tab (top right) and deselecting "hidden text".
See the greyed out designator in the below clip compared to the others for an example of the difference:
You can confirm this by plotting the top silk layer and checking in GerbView. Notice that the greyed out designator C8 isn't plotted on the gerber.
P.S - The KiCad-users mailing list is an excellent place for enquiries, features suggestions, bug reports, etc.