kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Kristoffer Ödmark <kristofferodmark90@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello!

I suspect this has been discussed before in different formats. But anyway.

What would be the major problems or concerns with allowing a schematic 
to have a pcb as file to include? What I mean is that the same way we 
let a symbol have a footprint in eeschema, we let a schematic point to a 
pcb file that is included before footprints are added to the pcb.

Every subschematic has a unique timestamp that could be added to every 
existing footprint in the schematic and should prove a sufficient way 
fix every designator number in the schematic in case a pcb is included 
multiple times.

I guess this would mean that at a later date the pcb-items would need to 
be able to be added to a group of some sort, so that one could easily 
move the newly included pcb as one.

Thinking about it this grouping is actually required, otherwise updating 
the pcb from the schematic might be impossible due to the fact that a 
board may contain items such as segments, which do not contain any 
unique id.

There is a huge gain from this, since it would allow multiple users to 
work on the same pcb in a different manner, allocating a space for their 
subschematic / subpcb etc, and also it would allow design reuse much easier.

Problems i see:

When parts of an imported pcb is updated how to handle it?
    - ( Propose to have a toggle to update all from imported pcb, or to 
ignore those coming from an imported pcb )


How should the grouping be available?
    -  ( Propose only let kicad group based on imported pcb and 
therefore every item can only have one group belonging or none group 
belonging, not changeable by the user )


If a subscheet has a subscheet, and both have an assigned pcb, how do we 
add this?
    -  ( Propose that only the highest level pcb be used )

How can one move all the parts of one imported pcb as a group, and how 
to change only a single item of the imported pcb?
    -  ( Have the disambiguation of meny show both the component and 
the group when selecting a component belonging to a group, toggle this 
behaviour on/off in a button from the toolbar, similar to the allow drc 
toggle )

How will this be managed by kicad?
    -  ( Assume that each subpcb and subschematic is a standalone 
project and therefore let the user worry about this, but add a demo 
showcasing this hierarchy with a ./main.{pro,sch,kicad_pcb} and a 
./subpcb/subpcb.{pro,sch,kicad_pcb} )


--
 -Kristoffer