RenumKiCadPCB V0.300 released!

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Hello

I completed an update of RenumKiCadPCB and posted the files at

** Corrected ** https://documenteddesigns.com/2018/02/20/renumkicadpcb-v0-300/ (thanks!)

This version fixes a number of bugs I discovered while getting the Olimex DIY Laptop project to work properly. To summarize my post at DocumentedDesigns.com:

The Olimex Rev C files themselves have issues:

ERC and DRC show errors. I was able to fix all the ERC errors:

  1. Resistor networks in the schematic have sections with different modules than the PCB
  2. There is an excess PWR_FLAG on a power connector.

Also (bug reported to the developers) LCD.SCH has a “phantom” instantiation which does not show up in ERC. The phantom instantiation meant parts were labeled U? but didn’t show up as not annotated. Even though renumKiCadPCB works, it flags errors such as this.

There are blank reference designations (i.e. “”) on the PCB.

The good news is, all these errors exposed issues with RenumKiCadPCB!

The Olimex PCB fails DRC with 9 errors as distributed. After creation and importation of a netlist this becomes 27 errors. The new errors appear to be associated with zones, a well established KiCad bug (see MANUAL.TXT).

I couldn’t figure out Olimex’s license, otherwise I’d post the fixed files (renumbered!)

After RenumKiCadPCB is run on the original files or the fixed files the DRC errors are the same, respectively. I assume, therefore, that RenumKiCadPCB is working. (famous last words …)

Anyhow, the important thing is there is a new version, it should have fewer bugs and works better.

Even a project like DIYLaptop takes less than a second to renumber with RenuKiCadPCB and back annotate the schematic and netlist files. By hand, if you could, this would take a day or more.

I’m still hoping to interest the developers to include the function in V5. If anybody has any pull, please pull.

And don’t hesitate to report any bugs to brian@documenteddesigns.com or send me links to honking large KiCad projects I can use to stress test.

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Your link is not the public one, it should be https://documenteddesigns.com/2018/02/20/renumkicadpcb-v0-300/

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V5.0 is in feature freeze, it’s too late for that anyways. IIRC you already communicated in the dev mailing list. If you want it incorporated into KiCad, things haven’t changed - it’s an external program, written in C and it reads and writes files, bypassing the opened project in KiCad. Instead it should use the KiCad API and handle the in-memory KiCad data structures, i.e. the live instance of the board inside running KiCad. Here’s how you would write a tool class for KiCad: http://docs.kicad.org/doxygen/md_Documentation_development_tool-framework.html#intro.

I’m not a KiCad developer, these are my opinions only.

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Thanks. I’ll read the docs. There is nothing difficult or complicated (besides my ignorance of c++) which prevents it from being integrated.

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