kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Brian Piccioni" <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wayne

I looked at the source over the weekend within the context of your comment. In eeSchema there is a command to "Update PCB" with a modified netlist. This command is passed from eeSchema to PCBNew by Kimail. At this stage my rough program design has evolved to a sort of state machine where there are several interactions between PCBNew and eeSchema via Kimail (i.e. passing the change list, checking it for errors, committing the change list if no errors, etc).

Since I propose to do a "dry run" of the component changes in eeSchema to check for errors it seems to me that executing "Update PCB" immediately after re-annotating the PCB and schematic would ensure coherency with the netlist.

As this is pretty much was a PCB designer would do if he re-annotated manually it should work under program control as well.

Would this address your concern or is there something else I am missing?

Regards

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Kicad-developers <kicad-developers-bounces+brian=documenteddesigns.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Wayne Stambaugh
Sent: January 5, 2019 8:07 AM
To: kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] Hoping to contribute but I have some questions

On 1/4/19 6:18 PM, Tomasz Wlostowski wrote:
> On 04/01/2019 18:51, Brian Piccioni wrote:
>> I am still keen to attempt to incorporate geographical component annotation into KiCad. In general, it is preferable for component annotation to be done relative to the PCB and in some logical order (left/right, top to bottom, etc). Thereafter this information is imported to the schematic. I wrote a standalone utility (RenumKicadPCB) which does this but ideally, we’d want the function built into Kicad.
>>
>> I understand this would be viewed as a “rogue effort” but lack of geographical component annotation is a major missing feature and my hope is that if my code works the developers might consider adding it or something like it into the project. Otherwise I’ll just maintain my own variant of the two affected applications for limited use.
>>
>> I am not used to working in c++ or working on large projects. Nevertheless, I figured I’d give it a try. I have been studying the source for a few weeks and have developed a strategy which would be very simple to implement if I had more skill/experience. 
>>
>> The first thing I want to do is to add the ability for eeSchema to import a “was/is” file to update schematic annotation. Since renumbering the PCB can be done manually or with a plugin this seems like a good first step. Since an annotation function already exists in eeSchema, all I would have to do it provide an option for replacing annotation with a was/is rather than the annotation generated by eeSchema’s annotate function. 
>>
>> I see a clear path to doing so however, the scope of Kicad and my limited experience with c++ and large projects mean it is not going to be easy for me. I am not that adept at navigating Doxygen files so I have a few questions regarding the source code (these are limited to eeSchema at the moment).
>>
>> 1)	Where are the file IO functions? I have searched for (for example) LoadProjectFIle and find the prototype but not the actual function. Similarly I find the prototype for SaveEEFile() but not the actual function.
>>
>> 2)	I would like to copy as much of the existing code and dialogs as possible (i.e. make new dialog based off another dialog) but when I open, for example, dialog_annotate_base.h I see
>>
>> 	///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
>> 	// C++ code generated with wxFormBuilder (version Jun  5 2018)
>> 	// http://www.wxformbuilder.org/
>> 	//
>> 	// PLEASE DO *NOT* EDIT THIS FILE!
>> 	
>> /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
>> //////
>> 	
>> But I can’t find the “source” from which this file is generated. Where is it?
>>
>> 3)	There is a guide on the Kicad documentation “Tool framework” which describes adding a tool to PCBNew. Is there a similar guide to adding a tool/function to eeSchema? How do I go about this?
>>
> 
> Hi Brian,
> 
> Others have already answered to your questions so here's my offer: I 
> believe geographical annotation is a very useful feature so I can 
> offer a bit of my help. Point me to:
> - the latest sources of your tool,
> - a sketch of the user interface (dialogs), can be a hand-made drawing
> - a brief description of how you want all this to work (in terms of 
> user experience).
> 
> Once I have this information, I'll try making a basic port of your 
> code to Kicad codebase to the stage where you could take it over and 
> contribute further features/fixes on your own.
> 
> Tom
> 

There is a lower level piece of the puzzle that is missing and that is back annotation from the board editor to the schematic editor.  This is non-trivial because you have create a netlist from the board information and pass it back to the schematic editor.  This would be the only solution that I would accept.  I want to avoid multiple ad-hoc solutions for back annotation purposes.

Cheers,

Wayne

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