kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Kristoffer <kristofferodmark90@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2019-01-04 15:03, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:

> I can somewhat see the utility in this but it really doesn't make a lot
> of sense to me.  Lets assume for a second that it would be useful to
> create a separate atomic part for every 0603 resistor part number
> currently available.  Given that the 0603 footprint file is 1.7K, the
> step 3D model is 39.6K, the wrl 3D model is 14.4K, and the fully defined
> symbol file would be about 1.5K so that's a total of 57.2K per atomic
> part number.  Now if you create a unique part number for every
> resistance value, tolerance, temperature coefficient, manufacturer, etc.
> that would be tens if not hundreds of thousands of unique part numbers.
>   100K unique atomic part numbers would require 5.72G of storage just for
> the 0603 resistors.  Add all of the other resistors footprints including
> THT and your talking about several 100G.  Add all of the other passive
> components like capacitors, inductors, etc and you are talking about
> several terabytes of storage.  Maybe I'm missing something but even with
> modern storage systems, this doesn't scale well.

I agree totally, But today basically we treat the symbol as the ultimate 
storage unit for these things, so if one were so inclined, it would mean 
a lot of symbols instead.

Basically I just want the symbol to be the graphics to eeschema, and a 
higher level part unit keeping the relation of eeschema-graphics, 
pcbnew-graphics, metadata and documents information.

I am not advocating the need to generate parts for every resistor out 
there. Just that maybe we should allow the possibility for me to instead 
of sending a pdf, a footprint, a symbol, a 3d file, store them in 
different specific places to match what is written in the symbol file.

Just allow a part to define all of these in one file, or with relative 
paths with regards to the part file, for easier transfer to partners or 
similar.