kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Vesa Solonen <vsolonen@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 1 Aug 2010, Alex G wrote:

> What I believe should also be done with the Kicad libs is a major
> cleanup. There are a lot of symbols that use weird naming conventions.

This work is waiting for some infrastuctural changes in KiCad suite 
regarding file formats. The functionality to separate schematic symbol, 
logical to physical pin mapping and physical component footprit (module) 
is not yet there. The subject was discuussed very throughly on the list 
during past two years, but its difficult to find now as the search is 
broken... Mail-archive.com archives only mails after LP move, so all the 
olde stuff has to be searched elsewhere. Try this thread for starters:

https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg03252.html

> you end up needing a plethora of redundant footprints. It would be much
> more logical to name the pins 1,2,3, and let the footprints take care of
> which are which.

The link above will explain some solutions. The point is thet there is 
just _one_ standard footprint/3D-library with standard pin numbering. 
Special components exluded. The best I know is located here:

http://www.uni-c.dtu.dk/~univind/kicad/

This library is going to get integrated to KiCad some day. Also the 
scripted approach for footprints is very recommendable.

> Oh, and let's not forget the plethora of "missing" footprints from the
> default libs.

> I'm actually willing to dedicate some free time to drawing those if
> someone can integrate them with the default libs.

Some ideas and tools for schematic symbols: 
http://users.tkk.fi/~vsolonen/kicad/
For footprints Oyvind's approach seems the best, so please study it 
somewhat before sorting to manual drawing. For public development with 
vcs https://code.launchpad.net/kicad-newlib

I'm the library maintainer, even though there is almost nothing done yet. 
It's somewhat chicken and egg problem, like in many other open source 
projects. Welcome on board, but we need to pull new thread for library 
work.

-Vesa