My 2c, something like this would be useful for fanout of chips,
especially BGA. You could have a standard fan out, which included the
main chip, all its fan out vias, tracks and bypass capacitors. It
would then be imported as a module, the schematic represents
everything in that module. Its placed on the PCB as a "multipart"
component.
But it sounds like a lot of work to implement.
Steven
On 13/11/17 23:11, Kristoffer Ödmark wrote:
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} )
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