Been using KiCad for a while now (Using 9.0.6 RC1) and it’s occurred to me that there is no way (That I know of) to store information about a project in the project file.
For example in the schematic editor, under page settings you can store some useful info like company, revision, comments etc, but IMO it would be useful to be able to store similar information about the project in the project file (Like when I start designing a project - various html links to datasheets, design docs, etc)
Currently I just add them to the schematic editor/page settings but having a page settings file included in the project would be useful.
Where does everyone else store this type of info? Maybe if this makes sense I’ll do a FR?
To me it would be logical to put the project name, date, revision etch in a central place so it shows up in the title blocks of both the schematic and PCB editors. But in KiCad, you even have to enter the titleblock data for the schematic and PCB editors separately. Doing this from the project managager (Or from any location and then keep them in sync) would be a plus for me.
But for more elaborate documentation, I do not see much benefit for building a system inside KiCad. A few months ago I started using Asciidoc for documentation purposes and that works quite well for me. With the Asciidoctor.js live preview I can directly render it as HTML in Firefox, and it can also be compiled into other formats such as pdf or epub. Note that KiCad’s help files are also written in asciidoc.
And Asciidoc files can link to other files. You can easily make an overview of your projects in one asciidoc file (with some short notes), then add links to asciidoc files for each separate project (which can have elaborate documentation, inclusive pictures, datasheets and you can even link directly to your KiCad project so you can open the KiCad project by clicking on the link in the asciidoc file. This works with any file type that is registered in your web browser.
Sometimes I see “schematic” files from “that other PCB design program” which has elaborate data in the schematic. Tables, 3D pictures, colored cables, assembly drawings and what not. And it looks quite convoluted. I don’t like it much.
And then you use **${TheProject} in the page settings of both the schematic and the PCB.
Do note I’ve made my own (simplified and smaller) title blocks. When I change that custom variable, it shows up immediately in the title blocks of both the schematic and the PCB editors.
And now it gets a bit weird:
You can set the text variables from within the schematic editor (screenshot above) or via: PCB Editor / File / Board Setup / Text & Graphics / Text Variables. But you can not set these text variables (which are global for the whole project) from the project manager.
In addition:
I do not very much like the way data for the title block is entered. With my custom title block, I also have to include a custom sheet with it’s layout to the project (I have “hidden” it in the “backplane.pretty” library (I also put project specific symbol libraries in that directory, so all project libraries are thrown together).
And now, using the text variables to synchronize the titleblocks is yet another hoop to jump through. I’m thinking of going fully custom, and just create a schematic symbol and a PCB footprint for the title blocks, and then work completely with these text variables.
Files can be embedded in KiCad V9, but I’m still on V8. The only remaining complication is that the sheet can not be empty. There has to be at least a sheet file with a line or a dot or something on it, or else KiCad defaults to the default sheet layout.
