kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Maciej Suminski <maciej.suminski@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Justin,

I also use an XML netlist and a python script to generate pick and place
files. I agree it would be much better to have it done in one step, so
you have my vote.

Do you foresee any user interface to display the fields imported from
netlist? I imagine the fields would be read-only for the time being,
until we develop back annotation. Do you plan to make the fields
available to Python scripts?

Regards,
Orson

On 12/13/2017 05:56 PM, Justin Partain wrote:
> I understand Kicad is in feature freeze and getting ready to release soon,
> this is an RFC for a feature for Kicad 6.0 (or whatever is next).
> 
> Proposition: add the ability to import custom fields from Eeschema into
> Pcbnew via the netlist
> 
> As a design engineer, I work closely with our production branch and the
> ability to export xy-data with user-created fields (namely, internal part
> number in our case) is a need. Currently, I'm looking at generating a .bom
> file from Eeschema with the needed fields, generating .pos file from Pcbnew
> per usual, and using a script to rip out the needed data from both and
> reassemble in our desired format. This proposal covers getting the data
> into Pcbnew, I'll probably send out another proposal for more customizable
> XY-data output later. If this is approved, I'd rather Kicad support this
> out of the box and I can maintain a branch until Kicad is ready to merge it.
> 
> This would require a .kicad_pcb format update and would not be backwards
> compatible (unable to open new format in old Kicad). I'm imagining
> key-value pairs like "(customfield $fieldname $fieldvalue)" for each
> (module ...). There may be interest in being able to draw these to the
> board, I'm not sure, maybe that could be added later if this gets approved.
> --
> 
> Justin Partain
> 
> 
> 
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