kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Alexander Shuklin <jasuramme@xxxxxxxxx>]

Excuse me for so much questions. There's plenty of ways how it can be
done, and I'm quite new, maybe I don't see some simple way.
I can back up data from pcbnew which is not up to date to schematics,
after that I call update pcb dialog. Somebody will want to update pcb
by references and after that I will have pcbnew old data which is not
up to date either to schematics or layout anymore. I don't think there
will be straight forward solution how to solve it.
May I just open update pcb dialog and ask user to care about schematic
and layout being up to date?

On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 at 17:16, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> There is no need to create your own dialog.  Just call the update board
> from schematic function before you back annotate.  You will have to make
> a temporary copy of your board reference changes because updating from
> the schematic will clobber any reference changes in the board.
>
> On 11/22/19 9:13 AM, Alexander Shuklin wrote:
> > Hi Wayne,
> >
> > I don't want to start PCB update from eeschema straight away, because
> > if you run back-annotation, you already changed some references in
> > layout and you gonna lose it. And probably you can get some footprints
> > which are not connected to any of components in schematics as there's
> > possibility in pcbnew to create them. What I almost done is reporting
> > about all errors in dialog (I currently use annotation dialog in
> > eeschema, but I can create my own if it necessary), and if there's any
> > errors, it will not allow you to back-annotate. It will ask you to fix
> > them first.
> > But if you want, I can run "update pcb from schematic" dialog.
> >
> > On Fri, 22 Nov 2019 at 16:30, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Alexander,
> >>
> >> You must ensure that all of the reference paths are up to date with the
> >> schematic before you attempt to back annotate from the board.  Schematic
> >> changes can result in the footprint paths in the board being out of sync
> >> so you have to perform and update board from schematic (this code
> >> already exists) before you attempt to run the back annotation process
> >> from the board editor to ensure all of the paths are up to date.  This
> >> will ensure when you back annotate that there is a one to one
> >> correlation between board footprint sheet paths and schematic symbol
> >> sheet paths.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Wayne
> >>
> >> On 11/22/19 1:18 AM, Alexander Shuklin wrote:
> >>> Hi Wayne,
> >>> thanks for answer.
> >>> Hopefully I will show you commit soon, so team could look, check and
> >>> suggest something about that. I'm aware about differences between
> >>> PCBnew and eeschema and just now I'm writing algorithm that will check
> >>> it.
> >>> Do you mean that some schematic file(.sch) can be used in more than
> >>> one projects? So, I don't plan to change the unique IDs and those
> >>> components will still be linked to each other, but if references will
> >>> be changed it will make a mess in another project.
> >>> I have 3 ideas how I can deal with that:
> >>> 1) create a dialog, which will say something like "please make sure,
> >>> that your schematic files are not shared between different projects"
> >>> 2) I can go by recently opened projects, parse schematics in each of
> >>> them and look if any schematic uses sheet, which already in use in
> >>> current project. I'm now sure, but I would presume, that it will be
> >>> quite slow.
> >>> 3) To hold information in what project this particular schematics was
> >>> used. So that's should be saved in .sch file then. But I don't think
> >>> that information will be very valuable.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, 21 Nov 2019 at 00:07, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> On 11/7/19 5:06 AM, Alexander Shuklin wrote:
> >>>>> Hi,
> >>>>> is it alright to answer anybody in one letter?
> >>>>> First of all, don't take amiss if I keep silence for a day, as I have
> >>>>> 2 little children and at the best case I have couple of hours a day on
> >>>>> my own.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 16:27, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>> Complex schematic hierarchies (using the same schematic more than once in a design) always trips up new developers.
> >>>>> Can you please explain a bit more? I know that you can use
> >>>>> hierarchical sheets, so there will be more than one sch files in the
> >>>>> schematic. And there's also "multi-symbols" which have few eeschema
> >>>>> symbols but one footprint. I'm not quite understand what means "using
> >>>>> the same schematic more than once in a design", as every symbol has
> >>>>> unique ID. Is it something else I'm not aware of?
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes, every symbol has a unique path ID but that doesn't mean that the
> >>>> board and the schematic will always be in sync so this is where issues
> >>>> come into play.  There also can be unique IDs from other projects
> >>>> because schematics can be shared between projects so you have to be
> >>>> careful not to break all of these cases.
> >>>>
> >>>>>> You'll want to take a close look at KIWAY::ExpressMail() and KIWAY_PLAYER::KiwayMailIn()
> >>>>> Ok, I'll look at that. I think I've seen that in footprints back annotation.
> >>>>>> This is unfortunate.  Being able to work directly with on of the lead developers would have made this task a lot easier to understand.  You are always free to reach out for help on this mailing list.
> >>>>> Thanks for that. Actually now i think to join FOSDEM, but I need visa
> >>>>> and I'm not sure yet.
> >>>>>> Asking first prevents you from working on something that someone else may already be working on and writing code that would be immediately rejected
> >>>>> Actually I already made that mistake, when made board statistics
> >>>>> dialog. It was accepted, but I felt myself really stupid.
> >>>>>> Good luck and thank you for your interest in contributing to KiCad.
> >>>>> Thanks! I will try hard to match coding and git polices.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 17:24, Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>> Eeschema now keeps its internal net state up to date continuously, but I didn't work on any continuous syncing to PcbNew.  The way it works in Eeschema, the graphical schematic is still the driving source of truth; the netlist does not drive the schematic.
> >>>>> Am I right in general idea: Eeschema creates netlist which updates
> >>>>> continuously. And PCB updates through eeschema by "uppdate PCB from
> >>>>> schematic" tool. It isn't planned to do that automatically and
> >>>>> continuously, is it?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Wed, 6 Nov 2019 at 17:56, Brian Piccioni <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>>> My utility is up on GitHub as a standalone app. I learned enough c++ and wxWidgets so porting it to Kicad should be useful.
> >>>>> I've seen your app, and bug report. And actually I try to jump in
> >>>>> because I use geometrical renumber of components as well)))
> >>>>>> Replacing my homebrew parsing of PCB, Schematic, and netlist files to calls to internal Kicad functions/methods in the respective apps;
> >>>>>> Once this is done I’ll use Kiway to communicate the changes between eeSchema and PCBNew.
> >>>>> Have you already start to create communication between eeschema and
> >>>>> pcbnew? If not, don't you mind if I'll start with that first? From my
> >>>>> point of view, that's a worst part in this question today. For example
> >>>>> you can renumber modules in pcbnew even by python scripts, but you
> >>>>> have no any tool to change schematic after that. And by the way it's
> >>>>> not only about renumber of all components. Somebody would like to
> >>>>> change some references in pcbnew by hand at push that data back to
> >>>>> schematics.
> >>>>>> In the final version, if I understand correctly, in V6 changes to the PCB will be back-annotated to the schematic in order to support pin and  gate swapping. So updating the PCB will immediately incorporate the changes to the schematic. I haven’t seen any discussions of how this will be done but clearly if the prototype as described above works it will be trivial to support the V6 common database.
> >>>>> Hm... I haven't think about that... I'm not sure if pin swapping will
> >>>>> interact with back-annotation tool. I wouldn't say that, but if
> >>>>> somebody has comments and thoughts about that, it would be greatly
> >>>>> appreciated.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> As far as I see now, It should be some tool a bit similar to "Update
> >>>>> PCB from schematic", which will utilize KiWay functions to send data
> >>>>> between PCBnew and eeschema..
> >>>>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> >> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> >> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp