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PCB Designer - Can't manually place part "cannot load symbol"

This seems like a common problem for beginners using PCB designer. I have read several other posts where this issue was fixed by pointing the psmpath and padpath to the correct directory in user preferences, but doing that has not solved my problem. I do have the .psm files in the directory I am pointing the path too, but still no luck. What else could I be doing wrong?

Robert Finley over 3 years ago

Checklist when this happens. It's frustrating, I know:

Any chance the footprint name is misspelled in your library relative to what the actual *.psm name is? Is the psm file there?

Is the library search path correct? Can you open the dra file without errors?
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aaronmcneil over 3 years ago in reply to Robert Finley

I just double checked the spelling of all three part footprints and yes they are correct, the same as the .psm files. The psm files are in the directory that I have in the library search path. I am also able to open the .dra file in allegro with no errors.
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aaronmcneil over 3 years ago in reply to Robert Finley

Finally I was able to figure it out. When I added the library search path, I added it under $psmpath. I used the move up arrow to make my directory the first one in the list and now it works.
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RFinley over 3 years ago in reply to aaronmcneil

Weird. Figured it would not have made a difference.

Common problem is padpath also needs to be set to your library directory. But, that may be more of a 16.x legacy as (I think) 17.4 doesn't use external padstack files.
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oldmouldy over 3 years ago in reply to RFinley

17.x still uses external Padstacks and Flash / Shape Symbol files so the $psmpath needs to be set to find any Flash / Shape Symbol files referenced by the Padstacks, the $padpath is just used to find the PAD files.
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