kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Kaspar Emanuel <kaspar.emanuel@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 29 January 2016 at 20:31, Russell Oliver <roliver8143@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> As a crazy thought related to having the board capture orphan pads under
an
> parent footprint,  conceptually what about a pcb being represented as a
> hierarchy of footprints.

>From what I understand most elements of a board can be included in
> footprints except for tracks. If tracks could be included as part of a
> "footprint" would it not be possible to export a group of footprints and
> tracks as a new reusable section of already laid out  components.
>

Sounds really great to me. I think there are issues with the DRC which is
why tracks and edges are not allowed in footprints.

Just glancing over the netlist format, it seems like it should allow a
similar breakdown.

I am a bit out of the loop, are there any plans on a schematic file format
update? If so having this sort of feature in mind (and tying in the
schematic) would be excellent.