In our organization, every design file we create has a document number attached to it. For example, a schematic file (for some unnamed tool) would contain something like “ABC-1234-name-of-design.sch” and the layout file would be named “ABC-1235-name-of-design.pcb”, etc.
Is this possible with KiCad projects? If so, how is it done? Is the project defined by its location in the project directory or is there some naming restriction that ensures the schematic and layout files are linked together?
Yes. That’s exactly how it works. Name the project as you wish, for examples “ABC-1235-name-of-design” and KiCad will automatically create schematic and PCB project using that name. Just open KiCad and creat a new project with the desired name.
The only thing is - the extensions are .kicad_sch and .kicad_pcb, not .sch and .pcb, but I guess this is OK for you.
Restrictions probably comes from your OS, so characters line , /, *, ? may not be used, but alphanumeric characters and dashes can be used.
I understand naming the whole project but my question is about individual files in the project; i.e. one file name for the schematic and a different file name for the layout, all within the same project. Will this break anything? Don’t worry, I’m going to try it out myself when I get a chance on an example project but I thought I’d ask the community before I start experimenting.
No. this does not work. In KiCad the name of the project, root schematic, and PCB all have the same name, except for the extension, and this is the way KiCad recognizes the files and keeps the project together. There is also a [project].kicad_prl file that is part of the project. By default the directory name of the project is also the same as the root name of the project, but this is not mandatory.
If this is really important for you as a company, then there may be options to have this designed in as a special feature, such custom development is not not free. If you want to know more about this option, then I suggest you first think about a budget, and then take up contact with the commercial support for KiCad, which is done via https://www.kipro-pcb.com/.
I understand. KiCad’s project files are tightly integrated so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to separate the board and schematic files anyway. We can adapt to the constraints of the tool but I just need to know the details so I can explain the situation to our QA archivist. Thanks.
I agree with that. Keeping the names of related files the same (except for their extension) is a common convention, and quite sensible in my mind. Also with programming in C / C++ source code and header files also have the same base name and differ only by their extension.
For the archiving / backup part, it would be ideal if only the “ABC-1234” part of each filename would be unique, but this conflicts with the wishes of designers, who want to get on with a project and do useful things. Keeping the “ABC-1234” part of each Project unique would be trivial and make a lot more sense in my opinion.
The only option I can think of are hierarchical sheets. So you may have project ABC-1234. The main (top) schematic sheet will be called the same as project. Then you can add sub-sheets called DEF-5678, XYZ-999, etc., so this way for example you can re-use some of the sub-sheets in different projects.
The PCB will be always called the same as a project name.