kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Eeli Kaikkonen <eeli.kaikkonen@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Feb 16, 2020 at 1:47 AM Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Pasting creates new timestamps.  So copy/paste works fine, there’s just no
> way to do a unified copy/paste between eeschema *and* pcbnew.
>

Yes, copy/paste in pcbnew works, there's no bug there. But the question is:
is it really useful that the "path" is copied, too.

As you said, if the user wants to keep the schematic and the layout in sync
after copying a footprint, they must:
1. reannotate the footprints
2. add symbols to the schematic
3. reannotate the symbols
4. and reassociate by reference.

That would work as well if the copies of the footprints wouldn't have
"path" at all, i.e. if they were like newly added footprints.

What do users except whey they copy and paste footprints? Do they expect
them to be tied to the same symbol as the original footprint, or do they
except them to be like newly added footprints? I would say the latter is
more natural expectation. I have falled into that trap myself. I thought
that copypasting a footprint is a handy way add a new footprint to the
board without going through the "Add new footprint" function. Then I
changed the refdes on the board. At some point I noticed that somehow the
refdes was changed back. Only later I realized that now there were two
footprints tied to the same symbol and normal updating PCB from schematic
changed the refdes back.

Eeli Kaikkonen