Thanks for the link to that site! I will definitely have to remember that one.
I have (lightly) used KiCAD for almost a year now. I have only have one board designed with it (a bit more advanced than a typical first project) and I love it. After getting accustomed to how KiCAD thinks about things, it is a breeze to use. The designers and developers have done a most terrific job and I am especially greatful for the more than reasonable price: FREE@ If there is one area of weakness it would have to be in the management of libraries. I've seen a number of postings over the past year inquiring about "how do I manage this aspect of components?" It usually initiates a flurry of discussions with the usual enhancement suggestions. It is always a very cordial discussion with many great ideas thrown out. Ultimately, it always seems to come back to 3 major sticking points: backward compatibility (VERY important), simplicity (being able to fix things with a text editor) and stand-alone (no internet connection to modify/retrieve components). I must admit, I have tried to think of ways that would solve these issues without much success in overcoming the 3 stumbling blocks. One of the things I thought of doing is to break the libraries apart in constituent modules so I can place them under source countrol (SVN, CVS, etc) and track changes. The problem here is that instead fo a few libraries with tons of related parts, I end up with a huge number of libraries with only a single part. Not good. My latest internal-only thought is a hybrid approach. - Write an application to extract out the libraries and generate XML versions of those files. (Please hold the flames for a few minutes lnoger) - Add whatever extra fields I want, such as manufacturers/part number entries, supplier lists, etc. - Place the XML version into SVN. - Have an application that can regenerate the KiCAD native library formats, without the extra information. Of course, this would necessitate creating a simple application that can manipulate the XML files to perform lookups, manipulate the extra information, import native KiCAD modules and export to native KiCAD formats. If I could ever figure out all of the dependencies, I would write the code directly into my local KiCAD and manipulate it there. Alas, I have never had the time to get it all straight before it was time to reformat and rebuild my Ubuntu or Windows XP machines for some reason or another. Just a few thoughts from my feeble brain.... Now back to my day job programming.... Greg ________________________________ From: Frank <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, April 4, 2010 10:29:38 PM Subject: [kicad-users] Re: Component management. Looking for parts - Checkout per your mosfet example: http://octopart.com/parts/search?q=2SK1058&js=on This type of web site, I've been looking for for some time. These guys have also not said no to the possibility of someday including Kicad (and others) symbols and footprints for each part. -Frank --- In [email protected], "marcmendezbermond" <marcmen...@...> wrote: > > Hi all ! > > Progressing on my project, I have a question about component/library > management. > > The "Component list" feature of eeschema is quite convenient but is there a > way to accelerate data input ? I would like to use custom fields of > components to store manufacturer, part number, ordering info and doing it a > component at a time is quite annoying ... > > My idea would be to input this straight in my custom library, then using its > symbols would replicate those info to my schematic. > > In the end, when I inserting a 2SK1058 mosfet that would result in a > component with Manufacturer field set to Hitachi, Part No 2SK1058, Ordering > No 1234567 in my favorite store, and so on ... > > Thanks in advance for pointing me out any method, > M. > ------------------------------------ Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your question. Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator of Kicad. Please visit http://www.kicadlib.org for details of how to contribute your symbols/modules to the kicad library. For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the kicad-devel group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-develYahoo! Groups Links
