Eeschema - Pin names overlapping for parts

Schematic
1

Hi Everyone,

While I was getting started with a simple AVR based board design, I notice some glitches with the schematic symbol ATXMEGA16A4U (from the standard repos). The problem is that the some pin names are overlapping. Here is a screen shot

Imgur

Is this something wrong with my setup ? What can I do to fix this ? My Kicad version info is:

Application: kicad
Version: 4.0.1-2.fc23-product release build
wxWidgets: Version 3.0.2 (debug,wchar_t,compiler with C++ ABI 1008,GCC 5.3.1,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
Platform: Linux 4.2.8-300.fc23.x86_64 x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Boost version: 1.58.0
USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=OFF
USE_FP_LIB_TABLE=HARD_CODED_ON
BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON

–

Thanks and Regards,
Aurabindo J

2

looks the same over here, so your setup is probably fine.

the fix is to edit the part (tools / lirary editor) and either reduce the font size or make the whole part wider to fit the current font size.
on github fork, edit, commit, pull-request might work if you want to contribute to the standard libraries (anyone know how much pull requests the librarians usually take or want?)

3

Small fixes / additions go through pretty quickly from my limited experience.

“Philosophical” changes, don’t even try it.

But this is clearly a bug, so they should be open to comments at least. I’ve reported a bug on github for this issue.

4

From the response I got on github, I take it that they’re willing to accept fixed symbols for the atxmega chips.

Someone will have to do it, someone other than the librarians themselves.

5

I would interpret that response differently, he is saying if you don’t like the library symbols, make your own. But anyway, submitting revised symbols seems like the way the gihub libraries should be operated.

I don’t know how those symbols were created, perhaps auto-generated? It would not be hard to auto-format the symbols to avoid overlapping text.

6

These symbols shouldn’t have been accepted in the first place. Whoever made these could’ve added a few mm here and there to make the text look clean.

7

Maybe, I am guessing the names were added by script, or maybe text size was changed subsequently. The kicad library rules have some rules on formatting, nothing on overlapping text, although that may be considered obvious.

Rules are great, but I found they are hard to apply unless there is some checking tool available. I think many of the rules could be checked automatically. As it is Sunday and raining, I will work on that :smile:

I will try to generate some re-formatted symbols and make a pull request.

8

I created a new set of atmel parts after running them through a formatting tool. I think they look better, but unavoidably pin positions have changed - which means they are not backward compatible.

There are some other issues with the Atmel parts, for example footprint aliases.

atmel_new

1 Like
9

I too created one, but just for the part I am using. Did you use a script to automate it? I thought I will send a pull request, but if you have some scripts that would fix it to for multiple parts, that makes more sense.