I’m looking for an easy (automated) way to generate an assembly & pinout drawing for some PCBs. Take for example the 9 pin connector in the image:
Each pin has a decently explanatory netname associated to it. I’d love to include a text in the footprint module that automatically shows this netname, like a value does for the whole module. Perhaps some checkbox to display this text in the pad properties dialog.
Maybe there already is something like this, but I didn’t find it. Anyone ideas about this?
Hi,
If by ‘automatic’ you mean that if you change the net name it will change on the PCB silkscreen I don’t have a suggestion. But you could edit the footprint and have a version to include the text on it and the other that does not?
It’ll do the job, but it’s not a one-checkbox job to swap between them however.
Geoff
Yes, that’s what I meant. I make a footprint with the text fields once and each instance of that footprint shows the netname in the predefined text field. Why I would like this: I regularly order PCBs to build and when they arrive (some weeks later) I print a magnified, annotated PCB drawing as an assembly ‘cheatsheet’. Having automatic pinouts makes things a lot more convenient (my boards don’t always have the free space to include them on the silkscreen).
I just dug into the inner workings of KiCAD and I guess it’s not really an option now:
The footprint format only recognizes three main types of text, reference, value or user…
If it’s just for documentation and won’t be part of your gerbers what about adding it as text in pcbnew, but on a layer that’s not exported. Dimensions and notes I’ll put on the Dwgs.User layer for example. Note there’s no science in that choice, and it may be a bad one to use for a reason I’m not aware of, but I selected it because it’s not part of the Gerbers.
When creating your documentation you could export an SVG file with the layers you want, including the (in my example) Dwgs.User layer, which would pick up your additional annotations.
Could that work for your needs?
Geoff
Well, that’s what I do currently.
I hoped to improve on this, remove this duplication of design information entry (the pin information should be well documented in the schematic). I tend to iterate and improve a design multiple times and automating this will speed up the process, while reducing the likelihood of bugs/mistakes.
