kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Tim Hanson" <tim@...>]

Hi,

yep, I was the author of that change. While I cannot change old
versions of eeschema that are floating around the web, I guess we
could export eeschema version 1 -- e.g. without hierarchal sheets and
global/hierarchal labels & alternate references. It would probably
only work for single sheets, but hopefully that would be enough for
backwards compatibility. How about if eeschema saved in the old
format unless the new format was required (and asked the user about
this)? Best of both worlds?

On a non bug-related note, now that we have hierarchal / duplicated
sheets, we need similar functionality with PCBnew. I have one design
with 8 identical channels, each of which has about 50 discrete
components. I'm not at all thrilled about placing these components or
wiring them up.

hypothetical solutions:
1. write an external tool to duplicate module placements and tracks
based on one template channel. the tool reads in a .brd, and writes
out a .brd
2. make pcbnew allow boards to include other boards, ala eeschema.
I'm thinking that people will object to this since it requires a
restructuring of pcbnew, which is already a very large program.
3. make pcbnew move multiple equivalent objects (different references
from the same schematic) based on spacing parameter, and draw multiple
tracks when drawing a track connected to one schematic's nets.
4. have two different schematic - pcb projects, and write a tool to
pannelize the gerber files. with this, you lose out on DRC, and all
the channels must be exactly the same.

thanks
Tim

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 3:20 PM, Jonas Diemer <diemer@...> wrote:
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>
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> Hi,
>
> around r750, we have lost backwards compatibility in eeschema when
> hierarchical sheets are used. Lifekidyeaa, you were involved in that, so I
> assigned the bug to you. :-)
>
> Maybe we should improve handling of such cases, e.g. warning on a File
> Version
> mismatch and possibly offering an export option.
>
> Best regards.
>