This is a simple script to read symbol positions from a .sch file and arrange the pcb components to match. Intended to be helpful for the initial layout to declutter and e.g. put bypass caps near their associated ICs.
My first plugin so coding suggestions welcome. In particular I would like to avoid the file dialog by detecting the associated sch automatically, but I’m not sure if that’s possible.
I haven’t checked it out yet, but I do have a question.
How does it handle multi-part schematic symbols? Is the relative positioning only used for part A? How does it handle multiple schematic pages?
I’ll have to try it out sometime this weekend.
How does it handle multi-part schematic symbols?
Probably not well… I’m pretty new to kicad and haven’t encountered those yet. It just tries to match ref designators so I imagine it will either fail to move them or move all parts to the same position.
How does it handle multiple schematic pages?
This might work ok, assuming references are unique across pages you’d likely need to run it for each page then move the components as a block out of the way before running the next page.
These would be good things to automate in the future - first I’d probably want to come up with a way to pack the components tighter based on their footprint size, right now I’m just doing a 1:1 scaling of the schematic.
This is excellent. I don’t care about a perfect layout, but this is definitely better than all the components clumped on top of each other at the start. Will give this a try. Thanks!
In version 5 the footprints should not be clumped on top of each other. They should be arranged next to each other grouped by hierarchical sheet.
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