> At my company we use a homemade tool called EDS to maintain our database of > physical parts, bills of materials and drawings. It is always a challenge > keeping this in sync with the CAE tools. > For KiCad I was going to try > > 1. Define all parts in EDS including vendor info and KiCad footprint. This > makes it easy to reuse the part in multiple PCBs. > 2. Define the PCB board Bill of Material in EDS including component > references > 3. Use EESchema to capture the schematic as a .sch file. Assign References > that match the EDS Bill of Material > 4. Make a tool to set the footprint names into the .sch files. It would > use the EDS database of Reference-Footprint info and add the footprint to > the .sch records by matching the reference. > It sounds like it should create a .cmp file also. > 5. Go directly to PCBNew without using CVPCB > > > I don't know enough about KiCad yet to understand the back annotation process. > > I'm wondering if someone has already created a tool to set footprints into > the .sch file based on a table of Reference-Footprint pairs??
This is exactually what the Back-Annotate button does in EEscheme, take a look at the .STF file created by CVPCB. > > Bob > You are hinting at a more complex problem that creates a BOM from which parts and a board price can be derived. Ideally in EEschema I would propose that instead of selecting a symbol, we have the capability of selecting a part listed in a parts file. This file contains a unique part number, symbol and footprint that get stuffed into the component instance fields. Note that each manufacture already maintains a unique part numbering scheme for their parts. Multisource cross reference, AVL, inventory, distributor, distributor#, unit price, etc is yet another separate database problem. The parts file could be project specific or subset of a company wide comma separated list that could be imported/exported into/out of a spreadsheet, here let me suggest one: F3 F1 F2 National:DM74LS00N, 7400, DIP14, "quad nand" National:DM74LS00M, 7400, SMP14, Vishay:FC0603E50R0BTBST1, R, 0603, "RES 50 OHM 125MW .1%", where the first 3 fields are sufficient for now. The BOM output from EEschema could reference the unique part number for better communication with the person that needs to procure the parts. The current BOM output references the symbol which doesn't detail which vendor's part or footprint. This example doesn't address the use of a data base to fill out a complete BOM. I recently tried this placing the DigiKey P/N in the F3 field and a CSV BOM can be produced as a starting place for a spreadsheet to price/order parts -Frank
