kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martin,

We’re currently talking about the “BOM editor” rather than the “Fields editor”.  (Click the spreadsheet icon in the eeschema’s top toolbar to get the “BOM editor”.

That being said, I have also wxGrid-ized the Fields editor, which can be seen here: https://git.launchpad.net/~jeyjey/kicad/commit/common?h=6.0&id=9f89aafd0b26d5eb1fd7442663958c16c8885dd2 <https://git.launchpad.net/~jeyjey/kicad/commit/common?h=6.0&id=9f89aafd0b26d5eb1fd7442663958c16c8885dd2>.

My version is a bit different than yours:
1) it supports things like text size, orientation, style, etc.
2) it still runs from the Fields dialog (both in LibEdit and in Eeschema)

Anyway, once we get into 6.0 we might want to look at combining the best features of both.  I definitely like the palette nature of yours.

Cheers,
Jeff.


> On 16 Apr 2018, at 16:02, Martin Schroeder <mkschreder.uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> I think that the new field editor is in the wrong place in the
> workflow. Typically I edit fields in the library editor and not on the
> schematic. I then use "Update fields" dialog to import field values.
> One big feature missing from the field editor is ability to
> back-import the fields to the libraries. So updating fields from
> libraries renders the new field editor completely useless where it is
> currently placed int he workflow.
> 
> Typically I want to have atomic private libraries where I create all
> the components ahead of time, assign manufacturer numbers to them and
> then reuse them without worrying about any fields after that. So
> effectively my private component library becomes the source for my
> bom. I then generate my bom from the fields that I have set up in the
> library. I find this to be a more robust way to manage components.
> 
> To make this workflow easier I have started work on a little panel for
> the library editor that allows editing the fields with a grid. I was
> not yet able to use a wxPropertyGrid for this because the program
> crashes for some reason in the constructor for wxPropertyGrid. I do
> not have time today to debug this so I went with normal editable
> wxGrid and a few helper fields. I want to eventually avoid all popup
> dialogs and just have all options readily available in the library
> editor. Together with the new tree browser this is awesome. What would
> also be really nice is if we could Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V inside the
> component tree view. This would greatly simplify local project library
> management. After that it would be nice to also add error checking to
> the erc rules workflow so that we can display errors if for example a
> component is missing a manufacturer number or some other field is
> misplaced.
> 
> I'm also a bit confused about the use of "Value" as actual component
> id in the library. I think this should eventually change such that
> component id is different from component value. Component value should
> actually probably be called "Comment" or something. However I'm
> thinking about an approach to add formatting to the display of the
> value field so that we can have spaces in it and perhaps discard part
> of the id (for example I'm thinking that a component named
> CAP@1nF~10V~0402 could display on the schematic as 1nF 10V 0402.
> 
> I've recorded a video today outlining some of the details of my work
> in progress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Bh3xSW2tA
> 
> Code is also available from my branch (martin) from
> https://github.com/mkschreder/kicad.git
> 
> I hope we can either add ability to import back fields into the
> library versions of the components or move the field editor to the
> library editor allowing one to edit fields for all components in the
> library at the same time.
> 
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 12:02 PM, Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Given the spate of bug reports recently on the global fields editor (the spreadsheet icon in eeschema), I’m thinking perhaps I should back-port my 6.0 rewrite which moves it to wxGrid.
>> 
>> The implementation itself seems pretty sound, but does drag one other change list along with it (for dialog consistency and beautification) that adjusts the layouts and icons of a bunch of dialogs to be more consistent.
>> 
>> Thoughts?
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