kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Kliment (Future Bits)" <kliment@xxxxxxxx>]

Hey,

I'm working with a part that has a very large number of
non-interchangeable units, each with many pins. For a part like this,
it's very difficult to tell which unit is which from the preview. Parts
have a description field that is shown in the list, but units don't. For
parts with non-interchangeable units, I think a description like that
would be very useful. I'd be interested in implementing such a thing.
One way I can think of of doing this would be as follows:

UI changes:
1. minor change to add part/component selection dialog - use the space
to the right of "Unit A" etc to show description, add description to the
space after the RD in the bottom part of the dialog

2. change to symbol editor - display unit description after "Unit A" in
unit dropdown

optionally, 3. make unit dropdown editable, make changes there save to
unit name

I would propose storing the descriptions in fields with special names of
the form UNITDESC_A, _B etc. This requires no change to the existing
data model.

I'd like some feedback on a) whether this is a good idea, b) whether I'm
stepping on anyone's toes if I do it and c) what branch should I base it off

Thanks!

Kliment