Can't edit netlist associations

Software
#1

Hi there, my first post.

I recently discovered KiCad, and have had great success - going from a design in my head to high quality PCBs made at home using a laser printer and etching. I had previously struggled to use Eagle without much success. I particularly love the consistent interface across the entire suite of tools, and the logical separation between the schematic symbol and the footprint. Please don’t ever succumb to the suggestion that integrating all data for a component into a single (intimidating) library definition is a good idea - it most certainly is not.

p.s. I’m running on Windows (XP), with help from KiCadWinBuilder 3.4.

Anyway, to my reason for posting…

I recently reran the “make.bat” file in the KiCadWinBuilder in order to update the software, the new build is BZR5993.

My problem is that I can no longer open .net files with the front end. I double click and nothing happens. This used to be the step in which I would associate footprints with schematic components. I see mention that the workflow has changed recently, but it isn’t clear to me how I am now supposed to accomplish this task. Can someone tell me?

In my case I only wanted to print off the component list in lieu of a BOM. When that failed I tried the actual BOM function and found it totally opaque. (Plugin? Wtf is it asking me for a plugin?). Is there an easier way print off a simple component list?

#3

Well thanks, but I don’t see where I said anything to the contrary. By “front end” I meant the launcher, not the schematic editor. The front end still shows the .NET file as if it has special significance, but if I double click it then nothing happens. Previously this launched CvPCB.

Thanks for the description. With that I was able to find the new entries in the schematic editor menus, including the one to recover footprint assignments from “.cmp” files. I appear to be back up and running.

[quote]As for “print off a component list in lieu of a BOM,” I’ve never done that, I’ve only exported BOMs.
And I don’t use Windows so I don’t know how to get the XSLT thing to work on that platform.[/quote]
Yes, in hindsight it was silly of me to expect full functionality on the platform which accounts for 90%+ of the market… :slight_smile:

#5

Re the xlst search: well thanks for the suggestion, but I’ve frankly had my fill of being diverted off of my own projects in order to find bits to fill in weaknesses in someone else’s projects. For the moment I’m happy to accept that KiCad doesn’t have a usable BOM function.

#6

And by the way - don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your help.