kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Nick Østergaard <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx>]

2015-10-03 10:45 GMT+02:00 Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>:
> If anyone has time to have a peek at my 3D refactor branch:
>
> bazaar.launchpad.net/~cirilo-bernardo/kicad/3drefactor
>
> the existing code can be built within the build/3dv subdirectory after
> configuring kicad for compilation. The kicad code itself is quite a few
> revisions out of date but that doesn't matter at this point since the
> code being developed is not yet touching any other kicad code and
> the test program 'test3dmm' can be built on its own.
>
> At the moment the code will only work on Linux (i'll need help getting
> the plugin loading to work on OSX and MSWin) and you can't currently
> see how the plugin will affect the list of models which you can associate
> since I haven't made the file browser dialog yet, but what you can see
> at the moment is the  3D model path configuration dialog which is
> accessible from File->Select (ctrl-t). I'd appreciate any feedback on the
> path configuration dialog at this stage since I'd like to avoid doing too
> much work which people might not like.

When I select a path or folder it will not update the path shown in
the list. It keeps writing ./, but I guess that is just a display
issue.

Maybe it is good to make it also show environment variables as we see
in the footprint library table dialog. I think those kind of dialogs
should be similar.

> The 3d path config dialog allows a user to edit the list of paths which
> will be searched if a PCB file names a relative filename. There is also
> an implied entry (never saved and never displayed) which is the current
> project directory.

Mmm, I am not a fan of hidden information. Consider showing the path
somehow. I mean, why would you like to hide it?

> I'll work on the model file selector next, which isn't as simple an item
> as it may sound, and should be able to implement all but the preview
> of the model being browsed.
>
> One other item I'd like feedback on: should we still give the user the
> option to save a full path or shall we automatically use a full path if
> none of the configured paths are a root path of the model and in all
> other cases automatically truncate paths to a root path stored in
> the config file?

You talk a lot about the model and a root path. But what about the project path?

> The one possibly big problem with using all relative
> paths of couse is that is a user accidentally modifies/deletes paths
> using the configurator, a project may not be able to find some (or all)
> of its model files.

Have you considered paths relative to $KIPRJMOD?