As the title says.
Sometimes i have to just inspect the board files. Let it be for manufacturing, or for diagnosis, and more often than not i touch some key, or drag things around… thankfully my projects are under version control so i can always get back if undo doesn’t do it for some reason, but just being able to see at least the board, with highlighting of the traces or the components, but no chance to modify things. Also because sometimes someone else goes to my PC and does this stuff when i’m not at the office, and telling them to stop is useless.
I’m aware of the online viewer project, but frankly, who would upload their or their company’s ip to some random server?
Do you need KiCad functionality (like link between schematic and PCB) during such inspection?
From time to time it happens that I want to see old schematic. In such case opening pdf with it is faster than running KiCad. When searching something in old projects it is also easier to open (at the same time) several pdfs than several KiCad projects.
And yet it doesn’t seem a difficult thing - conceptually -
But being also a software developer i can appreciate how subtly complex things can become. I will take a look at the FR
In terms of functionality, highlighting is sufficient:
click on pad/trace and highlight the trace and all pads connected to it
select component on list, gets highlighted on board (but i know there is a plugin for that, i used it sometimes)
In terms of looking at schematic PDF is indubitably faster
But If i am instead copy/pasting circuit blocks from an old to a new project it may happen that i keep editing the locked project by mistake
If you use https://kicanvas.org/, no data gets uploaded to any server, all the processing happens in your browser and you could also run it on your local machine, if you want to. Doesn’t solve the issue with random people messing with your PC, though
Some times you need copy a part of working schematic, as part of one new. And if when i am copying several hours, i miss one or two fails. Or editing the next version and you have the old one to compare or restore and open a second instance as source.
I didn’t learn to open a second KiCad instance for this. At bottom of Windows screen I have icons for KiCad, KiCad Schematic Editor, KiCad PCB Editor and KiCad Gerber Viewer. In such a case I open Schematic stand alone application (easier for me than remembering how to open second instance).
Of course it not protects you against not wanted modification. I simply have it open only for a short period of time. When closing it asks if you want to save changes (if by accident you have done them) giving you a chance to not do it. Never happened to me to save modified old schematic. I believe that if it will happen I will notice at once that I have just clicked too fast [OK] button and then restore file from backup.
i use the file explorer and make click on secondproject.prj and the linux open a second project. Right now i not remember the project extension, but i think that you get the idea.
I use that way ‘since always’ for C++ Builder projects, but I have never tried to organize it that way with KiCad projects. I simply do not jump from project to project so often than I just like that if I open KiCad using its icon it opens with current project I am working on.
Allways depend of the work. When someone make small projects, start-correct-end. But in very large production projects from 10k to 500K of production/year… probably we need to be carefull. Leave untouched the actual production, use a new schema (copy of previous version) and minimize the change to avoid fails on production.
Even is possible that you need understand why the project_V00 works this block, and the project_V01 has a small or sporadic fail. Open both as read only, and compare.
If you’re not using a version control system like Git (or Subversion, Perforce, ClearCase, etc.) you’re setting yourself up for trouble.
Production should always come from a clean checkout from the VCS. Changes to production projects should also start with a clean checkout from the VCS, and checked in and tagged when approved. This largely avoids any issues with inadvertent changes. This requires a bit of discipline, but so does most of engineering.
