kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Piotr Esden-Tempski <piotr@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey everyone,

Very excited to see design reuse capability discussion. This could also be seen as a stepping stone to a panelization feature/tool inside KiCad.

Just my 2¢ :)

Cheers,
Piotr

> On Jan 15, 2017, at 6:32 PM, Clemens Koller <cko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hello, Kristoffer!
> 
> On 2017-01-14 11:43, Kristoffer Ödmark wrote:
>> The conceopt is amazing, the idea of realtime really intrigues me.
> 
> There are some more crazy ideas in my head. Imagine rigid body dynamics applied to PCB design to Push & Shove traces as well as components (as long as they are not locked in place)... physics engines are out there - propably they are not only useful in computer games. Or: You layout your PCB with components spread out wide. Then you hit a button turning all traces into virtial elastic bands shrinking your design to a minimal area as far as designrules (causing collisions) allow.
> 
>> parallels to how when I use vias, 
>> I have a component for them, and when for some reason I have to change the minium via size, then 
>> I just replace all instances of the VIA-0.25mm with another footprint VIA-0.30mm for example. 
> 
> IMO vias are not footprints. They don't have references, don't get assembled, they can get optimized away (removed) automatically. They can become testpoints for flying probe/ICT, ...
> 
>> How I would like to use PDR is similar to how I use footprints. Assign a layout to a schematic. 
>> Basically I would want a new type of "component/part/layout" that I can add to either schematic 
>> or pcbnew item. But instead of having a separate symbol and footprint, this would mean a file/folder
>> containing both a symbol and layout(s) ( .sweet + .pretty = .cake ? ), I will call them cakes from now on =) 
> 
> Reusing proven parts of a previous layout can be a great feature. But what happened to me is that I needed
> a technology change - replace all RLC footprints from 1608M (0603) to 1005M (0402) of such a reuse.
> Or there is a need for an update from a library to replace all rectangular footprints with rounded rectangles to reduce tombstoning.
> This could all be possible with table based design entry and database operations (search & replace in selection)...
> 
> Btw. reinventing pretty names could be fun, but it raises the barrier to migrate for designers who where using other tools.
> KISS.
> 
>> This way when updating the layout, It would be easy to propagate it to every other .cake object in 
>> the layout the same way you do with footprints, keeping the KiCAD workflow intact.
> 
> Basically yes. An intelligent copy/store, load/paste feature might speed up the design quite a lot, if it's done properly.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Clemens
> 
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