Ideas of improvements

Software
1

Hello,

I would like to give my feedback on that great tool that is kicad !

I saw that there is a lot of posts about the merge of ui, shortcuts … but I would point out some other really easy improvements to implements.

The first is that kicad lacks of hint box ! Sometimes, you have to go to the documentation to know what you are manipulating, that would be avoided with a small hint box, for example the technical layers !

The second is about the tool Bitmap to Component Converter. That’s a great tool but resizing can be quite a mess.
A true scale option with interpolation of the picture would be great, more than resizing by modifying the imported resolution.

Even better, auto resizing the picture with edge detection and/or interpolating the objects only would be super ! but that need some more advanced image processing. (Scilab has great toolbox to do so if any dev want to manipulate those techniques)

Also, it would be great to let the user choose ANY layer he wants to import the picture on.
I had to make a touch sensor and modify the file generated by kicad from Bitmap to Component Converter directly to get some trace on the Cu layer. There is the possibility to auto-detect island to transform them into pad too but that require advanced image processing.

Last but not least, a fully parametric design for footprint editor would save so much time on design that can’t be made with the footprint wizard.

Thanks for reading and considering those improvements

2

As there is a lot of changes planned for V5, i cannot say what will or willnot be changed,

Hints: so far all the buttons i can see have hover text, which to me accomplishes the same task

Scale on images, the tool does tell you the size in mm of the component your creating, you adjust the dpi to match the size you want, i agree that being able to rescale on the fly would make things easier, but i dont know if there are background reasons against it.

The footprint editor has been accomplished by a few plugins, I do not know when its likely to be merged with the main program.

1 Like
4

Nice to see that the forum is so reactive !

For the hints, there is none in the Pad properties of footprint editor for example

I will take a look at thoses plugins

Thanks