Extract Footprint from board

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone,

I am quite new to EAGLE and I like it, but I have encountered multiple issues throughout and had to deinstall EAGLE.

I made sure to save my projects into an external folder, reinstalled EAGLE and tadaa, all the libraries including the self-drawn footprints are gone 

So in my projects, I used those components and I can open those boards, see the footprint, even their details (like name) and move them around.

How can one take the footprints from boards and put them back into a library? I have no problem redrawing the symbol (I should anyway) but I definitely want to keep those QFNs, USB-Cs and BGAs...

Thank you so much,

K

[one-of-the-robs · Accepted solution]

Where had you saved those libraries?

If you saved them in the default library location within the Eagle install, then you will have deleted them when you uninstalled and reinstalled. This is why you should NEVER DO THAT.

If you saved them elsewhere, e.g. in your home folder, then they should still be there on the disk and your problem is probably that the fresh install doesn't have the directory paths set up. This all changed recently (V9.1, I think) so that the standard libraries are in a folder called "examples", and are read-only, and don't need to be listed in the path, which defaults to a $user/EAGLE/lbr folder.

Even if you have lost them, they are not completely lost. The schematic and board files that you kept safe contain the information you need to re-create all the parts they use. There's a ULP to export them, which is accessible from the File->Export->libraries menu.

(I may have got some details off as I am not at a machine with Eagle right now)

[jm2morri · Accepted solution]

I actually detailed this process in another thread.  See https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/how-do-i-add-a-part-from-github/m-p/8288546/highlight/tru...

James.

[Anonymous]

Thank you SOO Much!

I wanted to reorganize my libraries anyway, so I just used the last step he mentioned:

In board view: File->Export->libraries and export to create a library with footprints only.

haven't been so happy for quite a while..

Cheers, K

[jm2morri]

Glad you are happy K.

Keep in mind that the name of the library you originally loaded the devices from is stored in the schematic and PCB files.  So you can move all your devices to a new library and the library will be more organized (a really good thing) and that will help in the future.  But your current design files will not be referencing those libraries so the update command would not pull in any future fixes in your new libraries.

There are 2 ways to fix this:

1)  use the replace command in the schematic and replace each component in your current design with parts from the new library.  That is OK if there aren't too many parts in your design but is time consuming on large designs.

2)  the power-user way, edit the XML files with a text editor.  Do a search and replace of all the old library names with your new library name.  The original components could come from many different libraries so maybe search for "lbr" to make sure there isn't an entry that isn't your new library.  Save a backup before you do this--you could trash the whole file if you're not careful.

Good luck.

James.