kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Russell Oliver <roliver8143@xxxxxxxxx>]

I don't know if this approach is what is being proposed but the way I
envisage it working is to have the ability to set a list of default fields
at a project level, which you could also set as your default for new
projects. Not necessarily adding to the list of default fields currently
hard coded into Kicad.

Any time you place a symbol or footprint, it would copy the additional
default fields into the list found in the properties editor.

Users would be free to include what ever fields they like as default. I
typically use MPN and Manufacturer then Digikey, Mouser etc

On Tue, 22 May 2018 04:31 Ingo Kletti, <ikletti@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I'll throw in my weight as my job is supporting students working on
> their assigntments in electronics engineering (40-50 students per
> semester) and for many their first contact with EDA software is KiCad.
>
> I've created a small atomic library representing the parts we have
> readily available but the majority of parts are special to the task at
> hand and need to be sourced from Digikey, Mouser et al.
>
> We could impose a policy about additional fields, but from experience
> I'd say that we would have to reject about half of the projects.
>
> So if the fields like Manufacturer Part Number or Vendor were
> pre-defined, this would give first-time users like our students a much
> better idea about the usefulness of the fields without me and my
> colleagues explaining the same thing over and over.
>
> In addition external tools and plugins would finally know what terms to
> look for and work without the need for fine-tuning for keywords before
> being useful.
>
> And for the argument of "part number must be unique and Manufacturer and
> Vendor must be handled by the company database":
>
> This is complete overkill for one-off project like the ones our students
> work on, but nevertheless we need a way to enable external tools for
> handling the component sourcing.
>
> I guess this is also true for a big but silent part of the Kicad user base.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ingo
>
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