kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Simon,

Welcome to the KiCad developer's mailing list.  I apologize for not
replying sooner but my real job got in the way.  Thank you for you
interest in contributing to KiCad and watching the FOSDEM video.  It's
nice to know the effort that goes into producing them is not wasted.
Your proposal sounds ambitious.  There are other developers working on
various Python plugins so any useful additions to that ecosystem are
welcome.  I think Python plugins have the potential to make KiCad
extremely powerful.  I'm looking forward to your contributions.

Cheers,

Wayne

On 6/1/2017 2:01 PM, Simon Küppers 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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