I am new to KiCAD. I have created a schematic in KiCAD. When I print/plot the schematic to PDF, the PDF does not show component properties on clicking on component symbols.
Is this feature not available in KiCAD or Did I missed any configuration?
Sorry this is not how PDF works. PDF contains graphical and text information as produced by the program creating the PDF. The right click context menu will always be the one offered by your PDF reader.
And in kicads case you might not even get text as text fields but as graphics depending on your kicad version and operating system. (I am uncertain which versions if any give you searchable pdfs.)
This means you will need to have any version visible as fields if you want to see it in the PDF.
This is okay for me. Can I generate Schematic PDF as in attachment, from KiCAD? (When I click on a component, the component properties are popping up)
No.
Theoretically speaking it could be possible; see https://answers.acrobatusers.com/create-a-popup-window-when-hovering-over-a-word-q119135.aspx. You can create a wishlist bug report if you want to. https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/
No.
Reasons explained in my previous post
Disclaimer: I am not a developer of KiCad (just part of the library maintenance team)
Edit: The feature suggested by @eelik would only make sense if it is part of the core pdf specification. Otherwise you remove the reason why to use pdf. (PDF is used because it is a āstandardizedā exchange format. Making the produced pdf depend on the reader is not what one wants here. If you are reader dependent why not use KiCad as the reader?)
In KiCads case it is even worse as you also need support for this feature by the pdf writer. (Library outside of KiCads control)
While it is not currently possible, the version of the PDF specification that KiCad uses does support adding text annotations to the file (but not right-click context menus), and KiCad also uses an internal PDF generation library for the plotter, so we do have more control over it.
As mentioned before, log a bug report if including annotation information in PDFs is a feature you think should be included. Then it can be discussed more with the developers.
As or more useful would be updating the PDF output to allow navigating through the hierarchy of the sheets. IE you could click trough from the top level sheet component to the sheet it represents. The sheet could also have a navigate up icon added to allow navigation through both directions in the hierarchy.
Robert
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This is a feature other CAD tools offer. - the screen shot above seems to be from one of those.
Of course, as that screen shot indicates, users with this feature then complain they have no filter control over which attributes appear in the popup.
So, a feature to plot more into pdf, needs to include control over what to include in PDFā¦
Heh, Iād kind of like to be able to use the PDF hyperlinking to click on a component and have the datasheet pop-up but I can see that might not be a universal taste.
Robert
I agree it is worth checking.
Other CAD pgms manage this, so clearly there is native PDF support.
As I mentioned, the practical issue in use, is some control to prevent too much fluff in the pop-upsā¦
Of course, that complicates adding this.
Iāve also seen CAD pgms create nice pdfs with layer controls, so the PDF stack of a PCB is much more āviewableā, and there may be some use to layers in a SCH too.
Adobe products are very layer based, so layer support is quite mature.
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