kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[James Jackson <james.a.f.jackson.2@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Jon - I don't have access to Altium so that's really helpful.

I was wondering about the possibility of locking components; I sometimes
want to do this with, for example, key ICs - MCUs, DACs, etc. One could add
this as a Symbol Property, which wouldn't need any changes to file formats.
Whether it got a custom checkbox in the Symbol Properties dialog, or would
just be there as another option that a user may add (which would make it a
'power user' feature as it wouldn't be obvious unless one knew to add it)
would need to be considered - UI clutter vs. access to features for all.

With the multi-part consideration, where on the schematic does it dump the
new components? It wouldn't be too difficult to implement an algorithm
which finds a space in which all the sub-components required could fit,
with some gross assumptions on layout. Or can Altium add a component to the
BOM without it being on the schematic?

I'm also mindful that some algorithms can't solve everything (although this
strikes me as a non-trivial problem, rather than an impossible problem...)
- and bailing out and telling the user why is also always a option, in the
spirit of 'do no harm'.

Yours,
James.

On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 9:59 PM Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Altium doesn't have "annotate selected"
> It does let you lock the annotation on components at will, so you can lock
> some, reset everything (which ignores locked) and then re-annotate.
> If you change the annotation of one part of a multi-part component, it
> will result in two components being forwarded to the PCB like Janvi
> proposes.
> And also likewise, the ERC will warn about this if configured
> appropriately.
>
> As to how it handles the complex hierarchy situations JP mentioned, I'm
> not certain to be honest, because Altium's hierarchy model is a bit
> different from KiCad's (in some ways simpler) and I haven't checked to see
> if the same situations are possible.
>
> -Jon
>
> On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 4:48 PM James Jackson <
> james.a.f.jackson.2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> That's an interesting take on it. I can foresee the catastrophic addition
>> of loads of other components though, if there's an error in the schematic
>> somewhere and a rogue missing / one-over unit gets cascaded down sheets.
>>
>> What do other EDA tools do with annotation? Do they have this feature? Do
>> they handle these conditions?
>>
>> On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 8:18 PM janvi@xxxxxxxxx <janvi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> > - What about multi-units components: for instance what about renaming
>>> 2 of 5 units when one unit is the unit handling the power pins?
>>> > this is the best way to break a design.
>>>
>>> This should add another component to the BOM and schematic DRC should
>>> report unused gates for both of the reference designators
>>>
>>> > Good luck with block annotation.
>>>
>>>
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