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Re: New part file format document.

 

On 14 December 2010 14:39, Wayne Stambaugh <wstambaugh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I know all of you've been on the edge of your seats waiting for the the new
> part file format since Dick announced his plans to start working on the
> distributed library.  So without further ado, attached is the preliminary copy
> of the library part file specification.  Please take a look at it and make sure
> I didn't forget anything.  I have tried to accommodate all of the previous
> library discussions as best I could.  If I missed something, it wasn't
> intentional so please let me know so I can revise the specification.
>
> Initially, I would like keep the discussion focused on what is missing and how
> it should be implemented.  Please keep the discussion on semantics like "I
> would rather use thickness instead of line_width" until after we've hammered
> out all of the technical issues.
>
> Once we have a consensus, I will convert the document into a more formal format
> similar to the current file specification documents and commit it to the
> documentation repo since that is were the rest of Kicad's documentation resides.
>
> I know it's been a long time coming so thank you for your patience.
>
> Wayne

I have been doing a schematic today after finishing work, as that's
the only way I stumble across things, when I'm actually using KiCad! I
came up with a couple more things:

(1) I think Vesa mentioned this in one of his paragraphs and is
perhaps more of a libedit capability, but it could have implication on
the library/part format.

When placing components such as passives (mainly R's and C's) you come
across the common problem that you draw the symbol either horizontally
or vertically. When you place the component it could be in one of four
orientations, but generally it's either 0deg rot (horizontal) or 90deg
rot (vertical).

When you rotate a component, the fields rotate with it, and I nearly
always have to go around and manually move the fields into a different
alignment when a resistor for example is rotated at 90deg. It could be
possible for such commonly rotated components to make a vertical
version and a horizontal version that are selected depending on the
current rotation. I'm sure there are a few ways of doing this with the
current inheritence you've created or else with a new part property or
something.

If this makes sense, lets talk about how it could be implemented,
otherwise feel free to poo-poo it here! ;-)

(2) So many micro's (and other IC packages actually) have several VCC
and several GND pins. I do not like hidden power pins at all, so I
always have the power pins shown on the schematic. I personally think
it's essential nowadays with so many different logic levels around to
explicitly see the power pins.

Is it possible for us to support a single schematic pin that maps to
multiple footprint pins? I think in Proteus EDA (It's been a while
since I used it!) you simply entered the pin number as a comma
delimited list which is nice and easy. I mention it here because it
would need to be supported in the part format, even if it was
implemented as just a comma delimited list.

This would make schematics neater for devices with a lot of VCC and GND pins.

Best Regards,

Brian.



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