kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/16/2010 7:18 AM, Brian Sidebotham wrote:
> On 16 December 2010 02:31, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On 12/15/2010 9:19 PM, Karl Schmidt wrote:
>>> On 12/15/2010 07:30 PM, Brian Sidebotham wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> 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).
>>>
>>> This is called Schematic symbol alternatives - usually you only need 2
>>> versions (bridge circuits need a 45 makes 3 versions) - most CAD systems
>>> have this - and its nice.  I added this to my wiki's wish list.
>>
>> This would this not be a feature in the schematic capture program?  An
>> excellent idea but I don't see it as a requirement of the part file or
>> the part file editor.
>>
>> Wayne
> 
> It does need a way of telling the schematic capture how to choose a
> look for a component. However, I think the functionality is allowed
> for in the current spec already. The different versions can be
> alternatives, then it is down to the GUI design to make these
> alternatives easy to select on a per-component instance basis which
> I'm sure is possible, and if I remember rightly desired by Jean-Pierre
> for large logic designs too for selecting deMorgan.
> 
> So I think this is already covered, I hadn't thought about using
> alternatives for this in the part spec. This also covers different
> pinouts for processors that are available in different packages.
> 
> The only thing not covered for me then would be one schematic pin to
> many footprint pins support. I can't see a nice way of doing that yet.
> It's only a nice-to-have anyway, and that's only my opinion which
> generally seems to differ from most others! ;)

Conceptually its a merge action so the syntax would look like:

(pin_merge PIN_LIST)

The part and schematic editors would only display the first pin in the list.
The schematic net list generator would electrically connect all of the pins in
the list.

The other option is to tell the schematic editor to merge all power pins with
the same name.  So all pins named GND, VCC, etc. would be merged into a single
pin for display purposes.  This behavior could even be applied per component
and saved a part of the yet to be written new schematic file format.

My preference would be to make this an option in the schematic editor since it
doesn't really effect the part itself.  It only effects how the part is
displayed.  Anyone else have any thoughts.

Wayne

> 
> Thanks again for all the efforts, I'm really seeing Dick's vision of
> editing the source of the part in the editor as it's so easy to read
> and follow. Well Done All!
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Brian.
>