Columns from Symbol Table into PCB Editor

[crgarcia]

Hello!

Is there a way to add a custom column into the Symbol Fields Table and display it in the PCB Editor?

Context:
I usually print in the silkscreen the Reference and Value, but there are other situations where I would like to have some custom text instead.
I dont want to store the text in the PCB editor only, since I might overwrite them by accident when updating a component (for example, when changing the footprint).

For example. I have two connectors, which should be the same Footprint and Value, but I would like them to have a different text in the silkscreen. Since I could not figure out how to have a “PCB Text” column shared between Schematic Editor and PCB Editor, I used the Value instead:

This is a problem when I want to assign part numbers, because both connectors will not be grouped if I group by value (which I have to, since resistors or capacitors might have same footprint but different values)

In the PCB, I want to print the Text that is now store in Value:

I am also open to any suggestions on different ways of handling this

Thank you very much!

[paulvdh]

In the schematic, you can add custom fields to a symbol. In this case just a simple resistor.

And on the PCB you can make these visible and set a layer:

I am having some trouble with this in the brief experiment I did just yet. At the moment I close the footprint properties window and unselect the footprint, the text disappears too. This may be a bug in KiCad. I vaguely remember a recent bug with visibility of layers and items in footprints. I think that the method I showed here should work, but I am not entirely sure.

Another option / workaround is to put a simple footprint into a custom library, and then delete all visible items except the default attributes from it. Then you add some simple placeholder schematic symbols to your schematic, link them to this footprint and can use a custom text for each of these combinations.