kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Mário Luzeiro <mrluzeiro@xxxxx>]

> BTW: Assignment of a footprints seems to me completely odd at this level.
> When I create a part it consist of a partname, schematic symbol, an assigned footprint, a 3d-model, and some attributes all in one place.

I recently moved to your more "PRO" approach,.
however, when I started in KiCad and PCB design, the Cvpcb (assignment of a footprint) made me more sense and I used that flow: as hobbyist user, first I care about the schematic, then I care on the type of components (starting thinking on PCB) I will use (Eg: will that be an SMD or THT resistor? Vertical or Horizontal capacitor? etc) and then I start the PCB design.
So I enjoyed this capability to not care much about some of the things when I just was drawing the schematic. It allowed me to go faster.

In the end I found that the proper way will be to create my own libs with the fields you discuss, etc.. but creating a proper library for a new user is a difficult and consuming time.

Mario Luzeiro
________________________________________
From: Kicad-developers [kicad-developers-bounces+mrluzeiro=ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of Clemens Koller [cko@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 02 February 2017 15:28
To: kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] [RFC] Application naming

Hello, Chris!

Eeschema    -> Schematic editor

Pcbnew      -> Layout editor

Cvpcb       -> move it to Library editor or manager

BTW: Assignment of a footprints seems to me completely odd at this level.

When I create a part it consist of a partname, schematic symbol, an assigned footprint, a 3d-model, and some attributes all in
one place. Then I grab that part by its partname (like the handle of a suitcase) and use it in the schematics. From there it gets
forwarded to the layout, bill-of-materials and assembly data and optionally to an 3d-renderer without any additional tweaking.

A part to buy, i.e. named "LTC6362CMS8" comes already with all the information to be placed in the suitcase - it has exactly one type of footprint (here MSOP-8, JEDEC MO-187-AA). I don't see any reason to assign different footprints to parts, because they usually have only one.

It's a different story if there will be some solder yield tweaking to automagically replace/update *all* footprints of a design by using a different process library. (i.e. use RoundRect shapes vs. Rectangular shapes to improve tombstoning or solderpaste release.)
Here, we are thinking to generate footprints dynamically depending on soldering process parameters - but an MSOP-8 will still be an MSOP-8.

Pl Editor   -> Template editor (we might want to edit other stuff as well such as board outlines for PCIe and similar things)

Bitmap2Component -> Remove as independent app, make "Import image" in libedit and modedit (dito.)


Regards,

Clemens