kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Fabrizio Tappero <fabrizio.tappero@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Simon,
welcome to the group!

Reading your interesting email I decided to write to you. I am interested
as well in the python functionality for the purpose of implementing killing
functionalities. via-fence generator is certainly an interesting thing.

I spend long hours doing schematics at work and I love the idea of
implementing python stuff that could make my life easier. Specifically I
spend a long time in library component generation and I would love to do
something about it. This could be done by creating new python (or non
python) tools to import component info or to created tools to facilitate
the contribution to the quality (and size) of the kicad lib. Not really
sure what is best.

Python scripts could be attached to F1, F2 and F3 general-purpose buttons.
So that others can easily use these scripts. This people would probably
make kicad better. This would be classified as "kicad user harvesting via
python scripting for library component creation " ;-) a topic I always
wanted to talk about on this mailing list.

Regarding your scripting database idea. Kicad comes with some script for
BOM generation and I guess lead developers would certainly consider adding
more scripts into the main kicad repo.

Cheers
Fabrizio




On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 8:01 PM, Simon Küppers <
Simon.Kueppers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> Thanks Wayne for approving me to the developers mailing list.
> I am very new to KiCAD (only heard of it some time ago) and just stumbled
> upon a
> Youtube Video of 2017 FOSDEM (I believe?) where Wayne presented the
> current state of KiCAD.
> As a result I had to see for myself and I am quite impressed of the
> development of KiCAD in the
> last years! Very impressive.
>
> I am a Researcher working in the areas of IC Design, (RF-) PCB Design and
> I am also a quite
> realiable programmer (thats what I think anyway :-)). I am used to EAGLE
> CAD (from the oldern days)
> and Altium Designer (ugh..). For IC Design we use Cadence Virtuoso.
>
> Now, what really kicks me off with KiCAD is the (still very early) Python
> support. In my opinion, it is definitely
> the right choice to pull some non-major functionality from the main KiCAD
> core and implement it into Python.
> Why? Simply because that way it is much easier for people to modify,
> tweak, extend and bugfix the KiCAD software,
> without having to study the KiCAD core. I want to be the living proof for
> this fact ;-)
>
> I already have some ideas for pcbnew plugins. E.g. a Via-Fence Generator
> (select a line-segment in pcbnew, start
> generator and enjoy the vias to the left and right of the line). There is
> similar functionality in Altium, but it
> is very rudimentory and cannot be adjusted or tweaked very much. Also it
> is sometimes quite buggy resulting in non-ideal via
> placement and due to this we usually place those vias (with GCPW
> transmission lines for example) by hand...
> I think this would be a nice example of what non-proficient users could
> add to KiCAD without ever touching anything belonging
> to the KiCAD C++ core application (where the latter would not fit into my
> available spare time due to its complexity, sorry!)
>
> Anyway, what I wanted to ask before even starting with the development is
> the following. I know the current status of the
> Python interface in pcbnew is very limited and "only" an interface
> generated by SWIG. So I guess there will be some
> heavy adjustments in the API in the future (which is fine with me).
>
> Is it planned in the future to make plugins part of the KiCAD distribution
> (i.e. ship them within the distro packages?)?
> (Or do KiCAD users have to find a way for organizing a repository of KiCAD
> plugins?)
> If yes, is the correct place to discuss their development (and request
> features) in this mailing list? Or should the forums
> be used instead/at first?
>
> I guess that is it for now. A big thanks to all the developers and
> especially the CERN folks. I put in a donation a few days ago :-)
>
> Best Regards
>
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