kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[mj <imp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/29/13 10:58, Maciej Sumiński wrote:
> On 11/28/2013 09:58 PM, mj wrote:
>> 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".
> 
> I am not sure if I got it right - are you talking about "subschematics"
> or schematics blocks (have a look at demos/complex_hierarchy.sch that is
> delivered with KiCad source code)? And then, in case you have multiple
> blocks using the same pattern in schematics (e.g. a few ADCs with
> filters) to duplicate parts layout on the board?
What do you call the one in demos/complex_hierarchy?
It's reusing the same schematic twice with differnent annotations (done
this before, saves quite some time doing a switch matrix - but with
hierarchy labels).
Guess if it's using hierarchy labels, it's a subschematic in your
terminology?

>> 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).
> 
> Is it called 'rooms' in the Altium's nomenclature? (For non-Altium
> people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYgvRCrVeOI /
> http://wiki.altium.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=22872356).
Yes that's the feature I had in mind :) (Zones was wrong).

>> 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....).
> 
> Ditching the module editor may be not such a good idea, you still need
> an editor for preparing footprints. And still it does not solve the
> problem of backannotation.
Given it's possible to use boards as parts and add pads pcbnew, it
should replace the module editor - or am I still missing some important
parts?
But yes, the backannotation is still a problem, but if one would give me
a choice, I would choose the "boards as footprints" feature first.

>> 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
> 
> The idea itself is great, but needs some more consideration regarding
> the implementation.
Indeed :).

Bye,
imp