kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

I would prefer that you did ask questions rather than spending a lot of
development time on a solution that would not be accepted because it
breaks things.  This is not a trivial problem although it may appear
that way.  There are plenty of ways to implement back annotation that
will break things in unexpected ways.  There are a very few ways to not
break things.  This is why I'm telling you this.  If you don't care
about the schematic and the board references being synchronized, then
back-annotation isn't really necessary.  As soon as you attempt to
back-annotated the schematic from the board, all of the issues that I
have previously discussed come in to play and have to be addressed.

On 11/22/19 9:53 AM, Alexander Shuklin wrote:
> 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..
>>>>>>>
>>>>
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