kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[mj <imp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/28/13 13:10, Martijn Kuipers wrote:
> 
> On Nov 28, 2013, at 12:07 PM, Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 10:56:42AM +0100, Maciej Sumiński wrote:
>>
>>> I am particularly interested in the main developers' view about points:
>>> - Cut/copy/paste
>>
>> Never felt a need for copy/paste on a board... YMMV of course (perhaps
>> for modular I/O stages or such?)
> 
> I can see it be fun to be able to Cut & Paste from one board to another.
> For instance, copy the switching power supply part as a whole.
Cut&Paste would be nice :). But I guess it'll be used to repeat parts of
an schematic which should be solved in an more elegant way - treat board
layouts as parts. Sure, you'll need some special part in eeschema to
denote a track as connection to "the other board".

Sounds confusing to make no difference between parts and layouts?
Parts and boards only differ in in the fact that an board can may have
more layers compared to a part (and no tracks in parts - why?). Layers
are all the same - besides we can only use the outer copper layers...
If we go a bit deeper, the microwave tool (create line of specific
length)  already puts an module into the boards layout - but it'll
discard all information about the length of the track - which was the
curial part about the created segment...
Besides this, the statements inside the module it created, are quite
close to the information about tracks, only missing the net and
timestamp. Imho we've got some redundant elements here (fp_line vs.
segment).
But if we use normal tracks to make such modules, how do we keep the
user from deforming those tracks? Add some special joints to mark some
"super-segment", between those joints, it should be impossible to edit
the single segments, only move them as whole (like the microwave part
before).

Like said above, the difference between the parts and boards is not that
big. If we would place the "add pad" button in pcbnew (and an field for
partname), we could ditch the complete module editor (which you can only
reach by starting pcbnew....).
Stuff like "Zones" for multichannel layouts (terms from Altium) would be
nearly implemented that way, you would only need the option to select a
complete board as footprint for an entire subsheet (or create a symbol
for the board and don't use the whole schematic as subsheet).
Goind this way, one would not end with, say 16 times, the same layout
which he has to edit if something was wrong - just re-import the
"footprint" (aka layout) and you are done.

Maybe I'm wrong with my view about the current situation in kicad, in
this case I would like to know why :).
Cya,
imp