Whis Is this Thread Still Active?

[Sprig]

Continuing the discussion from Annotation and Association with Ver 5:

This whole thread reads as nonsense.

@Brad_Stewart

If I paste a previous layout into a new design, the foot print values do not associate with the values in the appended schematic.

I can’t understand any of it; even after reading it after drinking several beers.

@Brad_Stewart

Shows promise. It may do what I want. I have two hierarchical schematics and two layouts. I want to create a new project that combines both into one schematic file and one PCB file. Doing so will require me to re-annotate all components. The plug-in will hopefully re-associate the new annotated parts to the correct footprints and reference designators.

Am I missing something? Do any of the comments in this thread in any way make sense?

[eelik]

It may not be clear but probably there’s much sense behind it. Reusing existing designs is difficult. What would basically be needed is a way to reannotate reused parts, both schematic and layout together. At least with some version(s) it’s possible to copy and paste hierachical schematic files raw, as text (and not by appending a sheet!), so that they keep the annotation. Copying layout keeps the annotation. But if the annotations of the copied parts clash with the already existing parts of your design you’re out of luck.

[halachal]

Think about how easy it is to copy and paste elements of a design within programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Powerpoint, Word.

This is a nightmare in KiCad currently.

[Rene_Poschl]

The programs you list are not really a fair comparison. They do not really have that much data interdependence. (Or any at all really)

A fairer comparison would be any cad program no matter if it is ECAD or MCAD. All of them have similar issues to kicad where copy paste between projects is not as straight forward. In all ecad tools i have used so far there was at least the topic of proper handling of manufacturer constrains. If copy paste was even implemented without the need to first export your part of interest as a design block or something similar (which meant that it is no longer editable in the target project. Not really copy paste as one is used to.)

Oh and there are long term plans to make reuse easier. (Including proper design block libraries and better copy paste support.) But there has to be a lot of stuff implemented in the back end datastrutures for this to properly work. (KiCad is an open source project. There is no marketing department that forces developers to implement a half assed thing just so they can advertise it.)