kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Tomasz Wlostowski <tomasz.wlostowski@xxxxxxx>]

On 02/13/2014 12:02 AM, Cirilo Bernardo wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> > From: Tomasz Wlostowski <tomasz.wlostowski@xxxxxxx>
> > To: Henner Zeller <h.zeller@xxxxxxx>; KiCad Developers <kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc:
> > Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:54 AM
> > Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] PATCH: making component choosing (much!) more usable
> >
> > On 02/12/2014 09:34 AM, Henner Zeller wrote:
> > >   Hi,
> > >   Choosing components in the schematics editor is very cumbersome right now.
> > >   (...)
> > >
> > >   So I sat down and thought about how it _should_ be.
> > >
> > >   This is what I came up with, see patch:
> > >
> > >      - interactive search-as-you-type
> >
> > Hi Henner,
> >
> > I just compiled eeschema with the patch. The browser is simply
> > *awesome*! I sincerely hope we'll see more cool stuff from you :-)
> >
> > >   There is another feature I'd like to add in a separate patch: show a
> > little
> > >   drawing of the currently selected component in the left bottom corner
> > >   (left blank right now) when selected with the mouse popping up the library
> > >   viewer. I left it as a dummy in this patch as I didn't want to make it
> > too big.
> > >   (...)
> > >   Of course, you might have suggestions - let me know what to improve.
> >
> >
> > Few extra features that came to my mind:
> > - footprint/3D preview,
> > - browser as a dockable window instead of dialog,
> > - possibility to assign the footprint on the schematic,
> > - and save the above to the SCH library.
> >
> > This may soon become possible thanks to the DLLization work being done.
> >
> > >   Download it here:
> > https://github.com/hzeller/kicad/compare/master...component-chooser-experiment.diff
> > >
> > BTW. Are you using git-bzr-ng or some other tool to work on bzr repos
> > with git?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Tom
>
>
> I like the idea of the previews - but to save computation time on 3D model
> previews, I would suggest that we create PNG images which can be loaded.
> If the PNG image does not exist then generate one. In the case of 3D models
> an orthographic view is probably the best generic option. Some of the more
> detailed models can be several MB in size (easily 6MB for a simple model)
> so I suspect this can really slow things down when doing a preview without
> a precomputed view.
Hi Cirilo,

I agree that model loading time may be of serious concern if we keep the 
single-threaded architecture that blocks UI until the model is meshed.

For example, Altium initially displays only bounding boxes, components 
appear as the background thread loads them. Same thing could be done for 
Kicad with a bit of 3D viewer cleanup.

Regards,
Tom