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["janvi@xxxxxxxxx" <janvi@xxxxxxxxx>]

pls allow some comments to Olivers do not fit suggestions. We recently 
stumbled accidently above Kicad after quarrels with commercial tools and 
found its push & shoove capabilites are a remarkable and motivating 
feature.

Experience shows, that the „do not fit“ feature is much more complex. 
Unfortunately PCB do not have interface standards for contract assembly 
and soldering in comparison to Gerber for etching or CNC drilling. 
Therefore cooperation with non black belted contract manufactureres is 
always painful. For this reason, we run our own SMD pick & place machines.

„Do not fit“ components are nothing else than changed value properties 
of components. E.g. variant A has no R100 and value of R100=DNF, variant 
B with R100=1k, variant C with R100 =4k7. Shure this decision is in the 
responsibility of the design engineer. To decide this inside schematic 
will end up in complex variant manager tools. Variants become instances 
of schematic. This raises more questions what beginners hardly 
understand. Finally we recognize that variants are not only a question 
of assembly but of component purchasing, stock keeping and so on. This 
leads to the blueprint V6 library format discussion what is much more 
complex.

I dont offer contract assembly and all designs are own and drawn by 
diffrent CAD. After struggling years with Excel BOM and insufficient CSV 
macros like many other contract manufacturers, we started 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cad2board/ Up on today Qt is only 
compiled and tested for windows, cannot read Kicad input and output 
format is limited to our Heeb pick & place machines  (today ATN 
innoplacer Berlin) So is of little consequence for Kicad but solution 
works comfortable here. We have complex variant managers but do not use. 
Variant decisions are executed at latest possible moment. Eg. the reel 
with CPU crystals run unexpected empty and there are a few more boards 
to populate. It is one click to take out this component from project 
temporarily without saving and continue assembly if I decide to complete 
the few crystals by hand while board testing. Same way we manage all 
variants and „DNF“ components permanently inside pick2place project 
files. They can be merged any time with updates from full size BOM. To 
understand Olivers efforts: The disadvantage of this solution is a 
possibly inaccurate schematics not representing all details of any 
specific variant.

Happy routing
Janvi