Some general feedback from use and abuse of Kicad for reverse engineering

[StecklerCircuits]

you definitely have some unique requirements. I’m wondering if you’ve found the “update schematic from PCB” button yet. That might solve a few of your workflow issues. YMMV.

[myne]

Guess you skimmed it, huh?

[StecklerCircuits]

TLDR -

“odd bug” to you, seems like the normal workflow, no?

[myne]

The normal workflow is to update LABEL3 to LABEL3?

[eelik]

@myne

Opening a secondary window, like “change footprint” disables other windows even in different “subprograms” like pcb editor.

Sometimes this is annoying and unnecessary. In the larger picture, though, there are many cases where the schematic and PCB can interact (through update processes) so that there could be bad consequences in keeping open windows which have one data from one or the other and which also could change that data. Real time update (some kind of push-pull) has also been proposed for at least some dialog views, but it’s much work – and also future maintenance burden – which would not benefit much. If you have a certain dialog in mind which could absolutely be non-modal, within one subprogram or within one editor, without drawbacks, you can file an issue. But in general there’s no intention to make all dialogs non-modal.

[eelik]

@myne

Tab between property fields is inconsistent

Schematics Graphical Elements

I have understood that you mean the Tab key press which goes to next GUI control. That one doesn’t need any discussion or design document. Just someone who is willing to learn how this is done in wxWindows, then edit the dialog files, using one’s own judgement for making decisions about the order. As long as you do this specific thing only, you can’t mess it up or make it any worse than it is now. This doesn’t even need any real programming skills, only finding the correct way to do it in certa…

[eelik]

@myne

Reporting bugs within the program requires authentication. I suppose this is by design to reduce report volume.

Not intentionally. It’s just the most practical solution.

Gitlab has both git service and issue database, it’s a nice bundled solution. But Gitlab has also made creating an account even impossible in some cases, and I hate that, but there’s little or nothing we can do about it.

Maintaining another issue database would be a full-time job. And unfortunately not requiring authentication would lead to chaos (spam etc.) and is out of question in any case.

[eelik]

@myne

Copy and paste has no option to keep values.

Which copy/paste, where? What “values”? There’s Paste Special in schematic, you can change what it does to reference designators. Value field is kept intact with normal Paste.

[eelik]

@myne

Limited ability to resize things in footprint/symbol editor. I wanted to 5x resize a footprint for… reasons. Ended up doing it kludgily but successfully in excel. It’s simple math, but tedious to get right.
Wanted to create a capacitor network. Copied a cap, opened an RN with the right layout, realised I couldn’t just shrink the image to fit.

I don’t understand your use case, nor what you actually edited in Excel.

I know some people would like the feature. Personally I would rather see it as a plugin than as a built-in feature. It would be difficult to get it “right” for all use cases and it would probably be bloat, for little benefit, and only for niche use cases.

[craftyjon]

@eelik

Not intentionally. It’s just the most practical solution.

Actually it is intentional. We choose to use a bug reporting solution that requires the reporter to have an account so that we can establish back and forth communications with the reporter. Bug reports that are “one way” where we can’t follow up easily are not helpful.

[eelik]

@myne

Objects can be placed successfully far, far outside this bounding area, but they cannot be zoomed into or manipulated.

Yes, I think it’s a bug in some way or another, but it would need reporting as an issue. I think you already know this, but the stock answer to these random notions about bugs is “file an issue, otherwise it won’t be fixed”. Discussions about feature requests is useful here, but if something is an outright bug, you could as well spend your time filing an issue.

[eelik]

I meant that limiting volume is a side effect.

[eelik]

@myne

Local ratsnest doesn’t work as I would expect.
I would expect to be able to turn off all nets, and then click a unit and have its ratsnest turn on.

There seems to be no one right way for this to work satisfyingly for all users. I wouldn’t mind if ratsnest show/hide features would be made configurable. I have never learned to use that “local” thing, and I think the behavior has been changed at some point.

[eelik]

@myne

Toggle button for automatic net highlighting (eg when you click a net, it autohighlights)

You can highlight a net with a hotkey. What more do you want? Do you want to highlight more than one net at a time, just by clicking them one by one? Why?

[eelik]

@myne

A lot of repetition. Particularly fonts. eg (effects(font(size 1.27 1.27))) is repeated tens of thousands of times in the files.
Might be worth considering setting a default value for some things like that at the top of a section and only recording when it is different.
In many ways, a table style would be more efficient for much of the data - especially for manual editing.
Yes, it’s pretty readable as it is.

Human readability (easy readability) isn’t the main point of the file format, although it’s important. It must be effective for the software. How the software uses the file format is invisible to the user, and it’s not obvious how technical implementation viewpoints affect the file format. Data storage is cheap. Other factors may be much more important. I believe the developers have already considered redundancy in the files.

[myne]

It would be easier to address your points if it was one post, but I did at least learn about paste special.
Not sure how I didn’t see that right under my nose the 10,000 times I’ve rightclicked.

1. ‘non modal’
   It can get annoying when for example you open footprint/symbol editor and forgot the name of the thing you want to open, so you try to look at the schematic and get the name, but it can’t work with the open X window open. In that case, I can’t think of a reason for it to be modal, but maybe you know better.

2. Keyboard tab order
   Correct. It’s not unique to kicad. Over the years I’ve seen many programs where it’s out of order or broken. TBH I’m slightly surprised in the 25+ years since I used Visual basic 6, that it’s doesn’t have some sort of automatic plugin to assign them automatically.

3. dev responeded.

4. paste special.
   I’m apparently as blind as I am stupid

5. local ratsnest
   As it stands now, all it can reliably do is turn the local ratsnest off. It frankly seems useless.
   I am convinced something is broken with it (maybe my config somehow?) because I can’t think how anyone would find it useful to turn off one tiny ratsnest in a sea of ratsnests, but not be able to turn ON one tiny ratsnest when they’re all off.

6. net highlight hotkey.
   Thanks.
   The clear net highlight hotkey is shown in the context menu, but the hightlight key isn’t which is possibly why I missed it.

7. Look, it’s just an opinion, but I know there are people like me out there that britalise files because it’s faster.
   Here’s an example of updating pin names/numbers by basically cutting the relevant section out of the file, adding tabs, updating the names/numbers, and pasting it back in:

For those sections of the file, I believe both humans and computers would find it easier/faster to read a table.
Even html uses tables where it’s more sensible.

What have we got in there?
Pintype, X, Y, rotation, Name, Number, Pin length, 2x font details.
I would argue that the effects/fonts can be set in a header, and the rest can be a table.
I’ve thought about writing my own export/import tool. Maybe I will get around to it.

[sugenganthos]

@myne

Limited ability to resize things in footprint/symbol editor. I wanted to 5x resize a footprint for… reasons.

It is a Default behaviour to have this for CAD application. It would be disastrous to have other way. Because CAD have real dimension information.

[sugenganthos]

@myne

Not really sure how to write this, but something like ‘logical bundling’ of resistors/capacitors to r/cap network footprints might be useful.
eg, you design 4 caps, but realise in the real world that 1x4 resistor network will do the job, you have to change the schematic to match this reality.
Additionally, during board layout, you might realise swapping 2 wires on a network part will be easier to route, or that the placement of one sucks. Again, manual update.
An option to logically combine or split same-value components into or out of network footprints and reroute them to others should save time.

Hmm… Some multi symbol, like “quad OR gate” can be swapped. Also, pin can be swapped. More over, there is DeMorgan alternative. You just need to create your own symbol.

In the end, schematic present for error checking and documentation. If you don’t need this function, you can’t just ignore this workflow. Just enter footprint directly, you can also opt for “allow free pad” in PCB editing option

[sugenganthos]

@myne

It seems to be paper centric.

You are right about this. This function more requested with people which use schematic as documentation tool.

[myne]

@sugenganthos

Hmm… Some multi symbol, like “quad OR gate” can be swapped. Also, pin can be swapped. More over, there is DeMorgan alternative. You just need to create your own symbol.

In the end, schematic present for error checking and documentation. If you don’t need this function, you can’t just ignore this workflow. Just enter footprint directly, you can also opt for “allow free pad” in PCB editing option

Maybe I wasn’t clear.

Schematic: 4x resistors.
PCB: 1x resistor array.

Best I can tell, there’s no way to assign 4 resistors to the same footprint - without creating a multi-unit resistor.
I’m sure that others would find it useful to design it with discrete units, and then have some option to combine them.