Atomic or Not? What are you DOING with KiCad?

Community
25

Maybe you can solve it with variants like we do in cadence, but where variant 0 is always the non-atomic part number, and variant 1, 2, 3 etc is whatever you need it to be when going atomic. I know my KiBOM handles variants to some extend, but maybe not fully like I suggest.

  • Add these fields as default to all components: VAR1, VAR2, VAR3 …or how many you need.
  • When creating a component, the Value-field will be your non-atomic part number (LM555CMMX)
  • If you want to use the part in schematic non-atomic, you use it as-is.
  • If you want to use the part as atomic, you delete the MPN/text in Value field and fill in the VAR1,2,3 fields as needed
  • Make the BOM populate MPN based on variant number input:
    variant 0 uses Value-field as MPN,
    variant 1 uses VAR1 as MPN,
    variant 2 uses VAR2 as MPN and so on
26

I downloaded the kicad component libraries from github and put them into
a directory in my home directory. I then, in the schema editor used Preferences/configure_paths to point to them. All working again now!

Bit worrying though. Went through a phase of deleting kicad and then restoring
it using `sudo apt get’.
Someone on another forum said the problem with the linux installation
was that it dropped it into a directory where the user could not edit it.