kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've noticed a few bug reports and comments on the developers mailing
list recently about the confusing/buggy behavior of the footprint
filtering in CvPcb.  After using CvPcb while testing my NETLIST_READER
changes, I think I understand issue.  CvPcb uses three toggle buttons to
set the footprint filtering to limit the number of footprints in the
footprint list window.  One toggle button enables/disables the filtering
and the other two allow you to select filter by footprint filters
defined in the netlist and the other by the footprint pin count.  There
does appear to be some buggy (or a least some confusing behavior) with
the filtering selection.  I propose that the enable/disable button be
removed and the two filter type toggle buttons be used to select the
filter criteria in a binary logical and fashion.  In other words:

When both buttons are off, show all footprints.

When the filter by netlist filters is on and filter by pin count is off,
filter by netlist filters.

When the filter by netlist filters is off and filter by pin count is on,
filter by pin count.

When the filter by netlist filters is on and filter by pin count is on,
filter by netlist filters and pin count.

One other behavior that might be worth changing is when there are no
footprints that meet the filter criteria.  The current behavior is to
show all of the footprints.  This may add to the confusion when the user
expects filtering and sees that none of the footprints are filtered
rather than an empty footprints list.

This makes sense to me.  Please let me know if I'm way off base here.
If there are not objections, I will add it to my list.

Thanks,

Wayne