kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/2/2013 1:37 AM, dick@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>    http://www.eevblog.com/forum/open-source-kicad-geda/seriously-irritated-with-the-library-editor!/
>>
>> I intend to spend some time on this.
> 
> The most important sentence to me in the whole thread is this one:
> 
> "A lot of confusion would disappear if the part placement tool in the schematic editor
> allowed for footprint assignment within the schematic editor. "
> 
> (I am not taking a stand on database design, only on the difficulty of specifying a
> footprint.)
> 
> 

We talked about this a while back and I fundamentally agree with this.
Although I'm not sure that I agree with the user's comments that it
should be part of the library editor.  Most schematic components support
multiple footprints so assigning footprints in the component editor
doesn't make much sense to me other than the current footprint filtering
that we currently offer.  I would add an "Assign Footprint" entry to the
component context menu.  In the schematic editor, when the user clicks
the "Assign Footprint" entry, the footprint viewer or some enhanced
footprint selection tool is displayed so the user can assign the
appropriate footprint to the component.  This will be possible once the
Pcbnew shared object is complete.  Initially we could use the footprint
viewer for footprint selection.  Over time I would like to see us
implement a more sophisticated footprint selection tool which would
combine the capabilities of the viewer and the footprint selection
dialog (sans annoying sub-dialogs) into a unified tool.