Often only the PDF of the schematic is provided to a 3rd party instead of the all the kicad files. This is because schematics are sometimes controlled documents and/or under an NDA and also the schema should not be able to be changed by manufacturing. Sometimes it takes times to find where a component is located in the schematic. The netlist (xml) contains the sheetname. A sheet also has section (A1… D4 etc…) but this is not available in the netlist XML. Using an external tool we can then extract this information and provide this positon in a file to manufacturing along wih the PDF and the BOM.
Feature request: Could the position be added to the netlist xml, even if it is just a property, for example:
<comp ref="C410">
<value>4.7uF</value>
<footprint>Capacitor:cap_0805_2012_1.18x1.45mm</footprint>
<property name="Sheetname" value="main"/>
<property name="Sheetposition" value="D3"/>
Understandably the software must define a rule for the origin of the symbol and take that as the positions in case the symbol crosses multiple areas. it is not exact but it may help production a lot.