I find the symbol fields table very useful for catching mistakes, like LCSC part number errors or wrong footprints. I would love to be able to have a “live” text table on the schematic page which contains the symbol fields table content, updated whenever I make a change to a field. This way I could save the clutter and time of adding visible footprint or LCSC fields to individual symbols. At the moment I am just taking a screenshot of the symbol fields table dialog and pasting it as an image onto the schematic, but this is entirely static and crude. How difficult would it be to (1) create a plugin that extracts the symbol fields table contents and puts it in a text box, and (2) do that automatically whenever any field changes?
I guess this would only be possible with small schematics. For bigger schematics the table would be too big to put on the schematic. I guess that using the (modified?) BOM script to extract the information and an external spreadsheet program is a better option.
In addition to Pasting an Image, there are at least two other ways…
But, as I see it, the important aspect for me (perhaps others) is to maintain a Logical sequence of Ref’s such that if having U1, U2, U3, U4 then, deleting U2, I’d want the remaining U’s to be re-numbered sequentially.
It would not make sense to build a complex Code/Plugin to do it; some user (or, whatever) would break it, requiring grief-management.
One of the other 2 ways, is by using the tools in the manner shown in video below (it’s not to different than Pasting an image but, at least it’s editable if desired.
The second other way is to Edit the Schematic File. Can be done with most Text-Editors and/or Code/App. But, that does not eliminate the problem of Ref/other sequencing. Second video…