This just seems like a simple thing to change, because it could be done with a text editor in the past.
I’d like my symbol name to be:
R_1206_10K … with an obvious value of 10K
U_555 … with a value of ~ or blank
I see from the search that people have been asking about this topic for years now, and yet it currently remains broken.
Why?
Because no one thinks it’s important enough to fix.
Or because it would require some major changes.
“Value” is a special keyword and we can’t rename it without breaking a lot of things.
This will be easier in 7.0 if we support database libraries / component libraries as a feature.
Then, for example, you can set up all of your resistor parts to hide the Value field and instead show a new field Resistance where you store your 10K
Which text can not be changed?
If the text under the Name column, under “Reference” could be changed from “Value” to “Name” then it would at least be consistent.
The “Value” in the table can’t be changed. The label “Symbol name” below could be changed to “Value” I guess.
Do you foresee any problem with adding a second “Value” field?
I’ve done that once in the past, and it seemed to be okay…
Field names should be unique, so you can’t do that (maybe we didn’t enforce that in old versions of KiCad but we do now)
I think you just have to accept that it’s a quirk of KiCad that “Value” means essentially “Symbol name”, and if you want to store a “value” for a symbol that is something else (like “10k” or “4.7nF”) I recommend putting that in a field called “Resistance” or “Capacitance” etc.
Then I would suggest to make it obvious that it is a KiCad quirk.
Can the text be changed to “Symbol name/Value:”?
Or, “Name/Value” if the text spacing dorks up the size of the fields to the right?
Thanks for the feedback. Now that you have made the comments that this is a KiCad special feature I can sleep better at night!
BTW, a field name of “Value” is not rejected in V5.1.5 that I have on an Ubuntu install.
BTW, a field name of “Value” is rejected in a V5.99 that I have on a Win7 install; however the field name of “value” is not rejected. Is there enough case sensitivity in the program or should this possibly be rejected as well?
As far as I know, KiCad is internally case-sensitive in all the important places. But any external tools that are designed to process KiCad files may not be…
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