Already on the whishlist by the own author
As mentioned in my wishlist item, @qu1ck mentioned that one can tag DNP components as virtual components. (This does take manual intervention at the PCB level to match information in the schematic.) I went into more details in your posted issue (found here for the peanut gallery) on github.
This is a really nice tool. You should add it to KiCad 3rd-Party Tools so others can still find it long after the initial enthusiasm subsides.
Sorry, I’m not sure what that means. Some of my demos have graphic polygons, tool works just fine.
You have to patch your kicad installation though (see instructions on github) and patch is only available for windows for now. My mainstream patch to fix this for all platforms should be available soon.
Add more details when you are reporting an issue please. Describe what “cannot create BOM” means, does plugin crash? Does it create BOM but there are no polygons? If you run it from command line or scripting console as described in instructions, what is the output?
Thanks, I sent a PR.
Hi qu1ck,
It’s a great plugin, I liked it. Try to develop this plugin to get an interactive PDF. Good job keep rocking.
Sorry, no plans to do pdf. Non static pdfs are quite tricky to generate and poorly supported in most viewers.
Html can be viewed on virtually any device and is much more lightweight.
Thanks for the reply!
I do indeed have only KiCad 4 installed and using the script standalone resulted in a bunch of funky errors. I do agree with you that maintaining multi-version support for such a plugin at this point seems a waist.
Good to know that with having KiCad 5 installed on my computer I could use the plugin with older project thought!
Good luck with the development!
I just committed to master few fixes for compatibility with KiCad 4. Tested on a relatively complex board and it works. Let me know if it works for you, if not file an issue on github with console output and preferably board file.
It isn’t interactive, but for some group project board assembly for my maker group I just took screenshots with each line in the BOM highlighted. I’m currently stitching them all together into a document with the order that I want so I can hand out hard-copies. Easier than trying to make sure everyone is provided a computer, and keeps computers away from novice solderers.
I toyed with putting up a projector, but that would force the quick solderers to sit around with their thumbs up their a$$es while waiting for the slower people in the group. Interruptions in flow like that are destined to allow attention to wander, sidebar conversations to start up, and slow everything down slower than the slowest assemblers.
While a hardcopy output would be nice, DHTML and hardcopy don’t mix well. I doubt it would be worth the development time for my corner case.
That I actually can help with. https://github.com/openscopeproject/InteractiveHtmlBom/issues/23
I guess you could even print that into a (static) pdf if you want.
I updated the script from the master branch and everything started worked like a charm! Great work, thanks alot for the effort! I tried out the script with two different KiCad 4 boards without any issues. This tool will surely prove extremely useful for my work.
Using:
Ubuntu 17.10 with Python 2.7.14
Now your settings are stored in browser, you can pan and zoom the board and you can mark components as placed/soldered/ordered/in storage/whatever.
Also Kicad 4 users can now use it too (from command line).
Edge was casualty of progress. Press F to pay respects.
Demos are updated.
Works great for me in Gentoo, directly from pcbnew! I guess I’m building everything correctly to get around the python issue. Nice work!
Congrats for the new features included in this beta release
Thanks for zoom implementation
Good tool. However i have one minor nit-picky complaint.
It might be better to use the F.Fab and B.Fab layers instead of (or in addition to) the silk layers. These are the layers intended for documentation (and for fabrication information) The silk layers might be quite empty on boards with high density. (Silk printing has minimum copper to silk clearances, and minimum line widths which do not affect your tool.)
All footprints in the official lib are setup to be used that way.
I think it should be an option. IMHO this tool helps the assembler load the board based on looking at the board. Since the Fab layers don’t show on the finished board, using them should be a option. Granted, having them as an option to turn on would allow assembly notes to be put on the Fab layers w/o cluttering the board with extra silkscreen.
My thoughts exactly. I’ll add Fab layers as an option later.
I installed (whatever it is) the latest version of this amazing tool on my Kicad5.0, but it does not show any ibom button in the PcbNew. But I didn’t any got any problem with the previous version.
Are you saying that you had ibom button with previous version (0.6?) of the plugin but you don’t have it with 0.7?
When you updated did you completely remove the old folder? Do you use git checkout or do you download release zip file? Did you exit and completely restart kicad, not just pcbnew, after update?
Yes
I completely removed the old folder. I downloaded the Zip from GitHub and restarted the kicad and also the computer