I was wondering if there is a good guide to KiCAD, specifically regarding how to use the top level software KiCAD (rather than Eeschema or PCBnew or any other “sub” software).
The reason I’m asking is that I can’t seem to figure out how KiCAD organizes the project view. I have a schematic with subsheets, and initially, it would show the subsheets, however now it just shows the top sheet. The official KiCAD documentation (https://docs.kicad.org/5.1.5/en/kicad/kicad.html) has not been helpful on this.
The specific questions I’m trying to answer:
How does KiCAD determine what files it will show in the project view?
How can I “reset” this cached list?
I rarely use anything other than the 4 top buttons in the KiCad project manager:
The most important thing is to start Eeschema and Pcbnew from the project manager. If you open Eeschema or Pcbnew directly from your Operating System, then they act in “standalone” mode, and this is not for working normally with projects.
That said. Navigating though hierarchical sheets I de by double clicking on a sheet to go down the hierarchy, and by right click and “Leave sheet”.
I usually do not bother with which files show up in the project manager.
Have you installed documentation and looked at: Project Manager / Help / Kicad Manual F1" ?
Chapter 3 is about working with the project manager.
Yes, I am launching Eeschema and Pcbnew from the project manager. I am able to navigate through the sheets as you described. The docs that came with KiCAD were no more helpful than the ones online.
I’m asking for some guidance on what it ^should^ be doing, because the project manager could be a very powerful feature of KiCAD, if I could get it working correctly.
The “sub-sheets” are only shown if they are not used within the current project. If they are used in the project then you access sub-sheets with the hierarchy browser.
Rene,
So I’d say to double check that. I just tried deleting the reference to a sub-sheet with my schematic (and verified there is no mention of it by opening the .sch file with a text editor), and I couldn’t get it to re-appear within the Project Manager. I tried the Refresh button and menu item. I tried relaunching KiCAD. I also tried opening a new project and then re-opening the original project.
It is unclear to me what your actual question is.
My guess is that you are thinking or hoping that the project manager can or should be able to do a lot more then it actually does.
For another thread I just dug up an old link to Eric Steven Raymond’s essay on how to ask questions in a smart way, and it seems applicable here too:
I’m specifically on step 3 and 4 of the “before you ask” portion. I tried reading the KiCAD manual on the website and from the help menu within the software itself, however, it merely glances over the topic I’m interested in.
I’m asking for a manual that I can read that covers the topic of the project manager of KiCAD, and does so in more than 1 page. If one does not exist, I’m open to helping the documentation team by writing one.
The project manager really has not enough features to fill more than one page. It really is just a central window that starts the other tools.
One very important thing to keep in mind for KiCad is that a project is a single PCB. I suspect you thought you can make one project that contains more than one PCB and wanted to use the main window to switch between them (which would be the only reason I can think of why somebody wants to see the sheets in the main window).
Good to know, and that’s really unfortunate as the project manager seems to have a LOT of potential.
I can definitely understand the 1 project = 1 PCB paradigm. I actually wasn’t thinking of having multiple PCBs within one project. However, there are some other features that would have been nice. The features I was thinking of are:
If we were able to see the hierarchy in the project manager, it would remove the need for the Hierarchy Navigator in Eeschema. As in, you could jump to whichever sheet you wanted. Also, if one is re-using sheets, which is one of the main advantages to a hierarchical schematic, then one can see that from the project manager. Also, if the import of sheets from other projects were happening (again, with the sheet re-use paradigm), the project manager could display useful information about that.
In several software development IDEs, I’ve seen the IDE’s project manager be able to open multiple projects within the same instance of the application. This would be a very nice feature for KiCAD.
It would be nice to have some project-centric facets be moved into the project manager. For example, the BOM creation feels out of place being linked to the schematic.
Not really to be honest. After all do you really want to switch to a different window just to switch the sheet? In fact i would much rather have the navigator dockable such that i can it always there.
Yes, it could have, but it’s the good old “too much to do, too little manpower”. With a little bit of imagination we could come up with 100 ideas which the project view could do - I’ve got a couple of them myself - but in the end KiCad works pretty fine without them and so they would be very low in the wishlist.
Multiproject UI would be great. I usually have more than one projects open all the time and switching between them is tedious. I would very much appreciate making it easier. However, that would require rewriting some parts of KiCad and rethinking the whole GUI. Which means much, much work. I hope some day we’ll get there.
Some things can’t be taken off from eeschema or pcbnew because those programs can be used standalone and there’s need to have the functionality without a project.
I guess I should have expanded on my thought. I was picturing the project manager docked on the left of the screen taking up maybe 10% of the space, while the active program (eeschema, pcbnew, etc) was taking up the rest. It ends up being very similar to having it docked within eeschema.
Good to know, and thank you for the background info. Hopefully one day I can contribute to the project to change the balance of the “too much to do, not enough manpower” equation.
One big thing to consider when rethinking the UI paradigm is multi-monitor setup. Users need to be able to have several windows of the same project open at the same time, for example schematic in one monitor and layout in another. The windowing system must need all needs. It may even be so that implementing a new UI system would be easier than planning it conceptually.
That would be at least 9.8% too much. I have no monitor real estate to waste on such a trivial feature.
I’ve heard rumors KiCad V6 (or later) will have a completely customizable “modern” interface where all task bars and Icons can be dragged around. Maybe the Project manager could be integrated into that.
Also, today I received a mail from github.
Apparently Ian McInerney has chosen to work on a compressed file format for KiCad, and this would naturally suggest an extension of the project manager to switch between compressed and non compressed. More on: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/3929
