Multiple PCBs per ‘Project’
Able to print across multiple pages (eg banner printing of sorts)
MagnetIc connections in schematIc
Developers producing help files/information of feature they develop
Nominal one off payment for obvious business use eg collaboration or Database usage.
Consolidation of GUI and menus
Gate swapping
Integrated update/upgrade of KiCAD
Wizard / graphical based PCB stack up including track, via etc configurations
True transparent two way updating of schematic & PCB
4 Likes
It’s interesting for me to read other people’s wishlists but it’s not useful to reply to twl with your wishlist. Most of the wishes are already in the issue database or even implemented. The official way to make your opinion known to the developers is to give thumb up for an existing issue or to create new one if there’s not an issue for a certain wish already.
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Are you saying you want us to somehow start charging money for use of KiCad?
FYI, there are actually good reasons for us to not do this. We have some great developers and documentation writers, but they are often not the same person. Not only is it true that some people are more interested in one than the other, but also it is a useful “check” to have someone who didn’t develop the feature try to develop the documentation for it, because it’s an opportunity to discuss when workflows could be more clear, etc.
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As a concrete example, as we refine 9.0.0-rc1, the development team have been actively iterating the UI and behaviour for some new features following feedback from the documentation team who are working hard to get the docs up-to-date for the new version. It’s made the UIs better, and the features more usable. Win-win!
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Indeed, Gitlab is a much better place for wishes - and after a brief read of this thread I think most of them are there already. As for why we don’t always implement features in the order of requests (and also why features that seem simple sometimes really aren’t), I recommend the story by John: A brief(ish) history of inconsistencies
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In addition: The ability to add a secondary footprint to symbols so one can make both a THT and SMD board in the same project.
3 Likes
Addition:
For everybody: Click the hart to “Like this post” for any feature you like. (I see very few of these as of yet).
Use it as a voting system to see how much interest there is in various features.
Note:
I’ll mark this post as “the solution” so it gets attached to the first post to give it some more visibility.
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Thank you, @Schweigstill for the reminder. Shame on me for the omission. If it wasn’t for KiPro, not only would the functions available be fewer, but the Kicad revenue stream be smaller.
Of course. My comment was that I am very happy to still able to work with a quality product that suits my retirement budget.
PCB stackup into regions for flexi-rigid
PCB stackup with odd number of layers for metal cored and backed PCBs
8 Likes
LTCC (Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic) is another PCB manufacturing technology in which the layer count can be odd.
1 Like
- unpacked symbol library: this will work better with git than the current packed one
- pcb design blocks
- monorepo support: that is putting many pcb projects in one git repo, while still be able generate gerber packages one by one.
The monorepo idea to kicad: putting many kicad projects in one git repository (#18956) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab
2 Likes
Flat design. Remove the mandatory usage of hierarchy blocks.
7 Likes
This is something that was planned for v9, but got pushed to v10
2 Likes
About design blocks. What precisely does it offer us? What can we do with it that we cannot do already?
With both schematic sheets and other board projects + append board feature. I can already reuse schematics and boards. I haven’t done it yet. But I believe I could already implement a workflow which allow me to swap out an entire microprocessor section and replace it by another, if steps are carefully executed.
However I can update only one board at the time. It ofcourse would be neat if I change some project in a library so that several boards are automatically updated (with all riscs involved)\
Bas
Hi Everyone.
I have some suggestions for Kicad v10.
-
“find similar objects” like Altium. Is very powerfull. Allow select items matching a specified criteria.
The tool is only selection, not take action. For example you can select all resistors of 2K7 on the project (all sheets). Once items selected you can do anything at your criteria. Update footprint/change to 2K2/ update symbol/ erase. etc etc -
Freeze project. Sometimes we open projects on production. Cant be modified because mean a mismatch between the real product and the origin files.
A Freeze can be usefull to avoid unintentional editing. Optionally the user can be invited to save a copy of project.
3)Organized outputs. Normally i generate this outputs on this folders.
Outputs/Schematic (inside the schematic)
Outputs/Fab (for pcb manufacturer) Gerbers-pads-holes
Outputs/Mount (for the assembly) BOM-position files-Silkscreen on gerber or pdf
- Schematic with text as text. At this time the PDF of schematic is created from printing and treated as graphic. This is hard to find components using crtl+F on firmware departament (they has no kicad, and does know how use it)
5 Likes
Yes, like many of the wish-list items in this thread, there are often different ways to do stuff, some in a more linear, others in more involute way.
About design blocks i can tell you a use case where i find useful applications:
in the place where i work there are lots of inexperienced engineers (students, junior colleagues, other field experts) and having a ‘library’ of proven working design blocks would be a big time saver.
Can you imagine how many times we have redesigned over and over the same circuit like a switching power supply (just with small variations, different parts, values, voltages…)? microcontroller? frontend?
Can you place an estimate on how many switching regulator designs i’ve seen working first time without any problem?
I would love to have a bit more flexible concept of project structure. The way I am thinking about it would be to have a more tree like structure, so that you can have multiple schematics in a single project. Then, for each schematic you could have multiple PCB layouts (for example, having THT and SMD versions of a design). I don’t know how much work it would be to allow that, but given that the designs are all kept in separate files, it would probably only require changes to the code for the main project window to allow the multiple schematics and layouts. There would also need to be some way of naming the files for each schematic in a project, and each PCB layout for a schematic, rather than just using the project name with different file extensions.
3 Likes
I don’t know if you have read it but I once posted my Best possible workflow It does precisely what you describe. Take the schematic of a buck converter (which is already routed and all) and than I append the board which corresponds with the schematic.
Bas
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Doesn’t Plot to PDF do that already?
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Well the schematics kinda already have this. Every schematic sheet has it’s own file in the project. And you can reuse them. You can also let more sheets use the same schematic. A bit like programming with classes and objects but only with circuitry instead of code.
And this file does not even have to be inside your working directory. That schematic sheet of that buck converter I mentioned. Now I used ‘insert sheet content’ but I could also set the path of the sheet to wherever the original schematic file lies and use that one instead of the copy pasting.
If I than make alterations to the sheet, all projects’ schematics would be updated automatically. Only the board part would need a manual replacing. And I believe that this part falls under the design block, right?
Bas
1 Like