I’d like to hear community’s opinion about introducing the notion of “part” in KiCad.
At the moment pinmapping data is stored in symbol (pinmapping being the relation between symbol logical pin name and footprint physical pad number). Many ECAD tools keep pinmapping in a separate entity (let’s call it “part”) that makes it way easier to combine symbols and footprint into a new part.
The idea is as follows:
- Symbols define only logical pin names (but no pinmapping)
- Footprints define only physical pad numbers (as it is now)
- Parts define mapping between symbol logical pin names and footprint physical pad numbers. Gate swap and pin swap can also be defined here
That would allow things like using one symbol “res” for both single and and array resistor pack etc.