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Highlithing components with a certain value

 

Hi folks,

while still being in the discussion about the layer based constraints, I would like to propose some other small feature. I will create that for sure, because I will need it eventually, but I’m not sure if it makes sense to give it back to the project, and if, how to implement it so that it “fits” into the project. (even less than the layer based constraints  ) 

First: The motivation:
The other day, I did a manual “pick and place” on a PCB, after putting the solder paste via a stencil. To do it more efficiently, I placed the components type by type. Means: I pickt the bag containing the 34 10k-resistors, looked, where they are, placed them on the board, and took the next bag out of the box.

Kicad helped me finding the places for the components. But it turned out not to be so easy. I searched for R12 an saw a screen with R12 in the center – but I had no clue where it was. Then are there these banks of 20 times a 10k resistor. In one row. So, I don’t need to search for each and every one. But somewhere, there was another 10k resistor. So how to find it? Search as long as you found the one that is not in this bank you already knew.

To finally come to the point: What I missed was a feature that marked all 10k resistors at a time. Very simple, actually. “pleas highlight all components with the value “10k”. Of course, if there are 0603 types of 10k resistors and 1206 types of 10k resistors, both types would show up. But normally I think this is no big deal. These I just have to distinguish from each other – after all, they’re different in size. 

So, a short thing explained complicated. Really nothing more than “highlight all components with value xxx (where xxx could, preferably include wildcards)

What do you think? Does it make sense? As I said, I urgently need it, so I will implement it.. But is it worth an additional menu entry in the release branch?

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