KiCad 6: Drawing Sheet Editor - Predefined Keywords?

[ch992319]

I have been working on a new drawing sheet which includes a revision history section. Want this to be a template I can use.

I have some ideas using the substitution text implemented in KiCad 6 however I don’t see anywhere that I could define new keywords in the drawing sheet editor? Looked for the life of me and found nothing. Anyone else have this issue or explore this? I see the predefined keywords like ${ISSUE_DATE} or ${REVISION} and the various comments… but I already have like 6 of those comment fields used in a title block. Wanted to create more comment keyword text subs so that the person writing in a description to the revision history doesn’t have to format their text manually.

Any ideas? Or just not possible?

[cdwilson]

Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but you can just add your own text variables into the title block worksheet:

Then, in the project setup, you can define matching text variables which will automatically replace those variables:

[Claudio.Lorini]

Thanks for the explanation, it confirmed how i thought it should be,
unfortunately in my case it doesn’t seem to work:
my Drawing sheet editor template:

my schematic page:

my text variables:

my builtin data in page settings:

it seems that only builtin data is correctly substituted, the variables are substitute with the name(?) of the variable, not it’s contents.
any suggestion?
Version: 6.0.4, ubuntu22.04

P.S.
…with KiCAD nigltly seems to work fine!
Version: 6.99, ubuntu 22.04
C.

[cdwilson]

Weird, looks like it should work… I’m using 6.0.7, I wonder if maybe there is a bug in 6.0.4?

[Claudio.Lorini]

yes, that’s it, installed 6.0.7 and all seems fine.

[ch992319]

Oh ok interesting, I thought that those text variables would be project specific and only usable for like schematic text. Which I was under the impression was different from the drawing sheet template text. Template text (or drawing sheet text I suppose?) being the red text and the schematic text being the blue text if that makes sense?

Looking at your title block, I want to add something kinda like you have ${ELECTRICAL_DESIGNER} which isn’t a standard predefined keyword, so clearly something added. And you did that through the text variable?

EDIT: Sorry I missed that second part.

Then, in the project setup, you can define matching text variables which will automatically replace those variables:

So in the drawing sheet design, I can create a new variable like ${DESCRIPTION1} for example, THEN when I go to using that drawing sheet in a given project, I have to go in to the text variables on a project per project basis and manually add in the variable ${DESCRIPTION1} With whatever text I want and it will fill in the text on the drawing sheet? I believe that’s essentially what you did w the ${PROJECT_NAME} example, but just double checkin.