kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ahhh… that makes much more sense now.

So we have back-annotation for Cvpcb which matches on reference and updates the footprint field.

This would be similar only matching on timestamp and updating the reference field?



> On 10 May 2018, at 19:10, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hey Jeff,
> 
> I believe Brian has proposed annotating by the physical position on the
> board layout and back annotating the schematic accordingly.  The problem
> I see is that we do not have back annotation support implemented yet.
> I'm guessing his implementation directly modifies the schematic file
> which I would be opposed to unless it uses the schematic file plugin for
> loading and saving the schematic to ensure file integrity.  The ideal
> solution would be to wait until the back annotation feature is
> implemented and push the updated references back to the schematic from
> the board editor.  It's not a trivial change.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Wayne
> 
> On 5/10/2018 1:54 PM, Jeff Young wrote:
>> Hi Brian,
>> 
>> Re-annotation is usually done in Kicad from Eeschema rather than Pcbnew.
>> 
>> The current annotation dialog supports two ordering mechanisms: "by x
>> position" and "by y position".  If I understand what you’ve done
>> correctly it could be added as a third option “rules based sorting” (or
>> something).
>> 
>> We’d then have to add a dialog for editing the rules.  How complicated
>> are they?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Jeff.
>> 
>> 
>>> On 2 May 2018, at 22:43, Brian Piccioni <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> <mailto:brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Sorry if this is a duplicate: I originally sent if from my
>>> non-registered email address.
>>> 
>>> * *
>>> 
>>> *Proposed Geographic PCB Re-Annotation for Kicad 6*
>>> 
>>> I wrote a standalone program called RenumKiCadPCB which does a
>>> rules-based geographical renumbering of PCB components and
>>> back-annotates the schematic hierarchy and netlist.
>>> 
>>> As it stands, this is an external program written in c.
>>> 
>>> Having looked at the Kicad codebase I believe it can be incorporated
>>> into Kicad as a standard function. Because this is common in
>>> commercial electronic CAD I believe it would be appreciated by the
>>> user base. Manual geographic re-annotation is time consuming and
>>> source of potential error. 
>>> 
>>> Currently the freestanding code works like this (summary):
>>> 
>>> 1. *Drops into a primitive text based menu system for set up;*
>>> 2. Parses the schematic hierarchy to determine storage requirements
>>>    and file paths;
>>> 3. Parses the PCB file to locate all components and their locations;
>>> 4. *Creates a sorted “change list” based upon the rules for sort
>>>    direction and the results of step 2;*
>>> 5. Makes backups of the schematics, PCB, and netlist;
>>> 6. Updates all schematic symbol reference designations in accordance
>>>    with the “Change List”;
>>> 7. Updates the PCB reference designations and nets in accordance with
>>>    the “Change List”;
>>> 8. Updates the Netlist reference designations and nets in accordance
>>>    with the “Change List”;
>>> 9. Writes out the updated files.
>>> 
>>> There are various “traps”, etc., if errors are detected.
>>> 
>>> Besides the issues of being a standalone program, the need to parse
>>> the various file formats (SCH, Kicad_PCB, netlist) means that if
>>> simply ported into Kicad the code would have to be constantly updated
>>> in order to accommodate even small changes to the file formats.
>>> 
>>> Having spent some time looking at the Kicad code base, I am pretty
>>> sure all but step 1 (the menu) and step 4 (creation of a rules-based
>>> change list) can be replaced by calls to existing Kicad functions, in
>>> particular those used for search and replace, editing text, etc.. I
>>> assume it is possible to spawn eeSchema from PCBNew in order to do the
>>> search and replace on the schematic hierarchy and to regenerate the
>>> netlist.
>>> 
>>> The Netlist Importer menu in PCB new would make a good prototype for
>>> the new menu.
>>> 
>>> Use of existing Kicad functions would probably result in the code
>>> running slower than it currently runs ( << 1 second for a large board)
>>> but that should not be a problem since this is the sort of thing which
>>> is rarely run more than a couple of times during the life of the project. 
>>> 
>>> Nevertheless, use of existing functions ensure the geographical
>>> reannotation would be robust against any future changes to file
>>> formats, etc., since reference designations and coordinates are
>>> inherent characteristics in an ee CAD system.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 
>>> *_Risks_*
>>> 
>>> I have to note that my participation has some risk:
>>> 
>>> 1. I am old (60) and have never written code as part of a large,
>>>    collaborative project: most of my programming experience is
>>>    limited to embedded designs;
>>> 2. I have only a passing familiarity with c++;
>>> 3. I am not used to the sort of documentation associated with Kicad;
>>> 4. These imply a steep learning curve for an old guy;
>>> 5. As such, it will probably take me much longer than a skilled
>>>    programmer to do this.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 
>>> Therefore, it would be helpful if there was a mentor I could turn to
>>> for some guidance, if the developers accept that this is a good idea.
>>> 
>>> I would appreciate any feedback. If you think this would not be a good
>>> thing to pursue, please let me know.
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 
>>> Regards
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 
>>> Brian Piccioni
>>> 
>>> Documented Designs
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
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