Why not using layer name as sheet name in the PCB print drawing?

In the PCB print drawings, the sheet name is empty, shown in the below:

But I want to find a place to shown the layer name in the PCB drawings because I want to merge all the PCB drawings for each layer into one file and I need to have a place to indicate which layer it is, I think the sheet name is the right place for the layer name.

So, can we use the layer name as sheet name in the PCB print drawing? And maybe the same with gerber which caints work sheet also.

No body care this issue? I think it’s not important for personal usage, but it’s important for a commercial application.

Actually I already tried to decipher this LAYER thing from the source code, unsuccessfully. I think it just doesn’t work in the worksheet.

There exists a simple workaround, though. Just create a text item on the board and copy it in all layers.

image

Although I have to admit it’s not much easier than writing the layer names yourself.

You could report this as a bug. The variable is documented in the worksheet (drawing sheet) editor and the variable exists in the source code for drawing sheet, so I wonder if it should work as you expected. Maybe @JeffYoung who has worked on text replacement can comment on this? For reference, here is the other thread about that variable: How to use keyword 'LAYER' in the worksheet editor

Maybe related:

Hi Eelik,

Actually, the topic this thread discussed is different from what you post.

The thing I want to discuss is:

Can we use the pre-defined keyword ${SHEETNAME} as the layer name in the PCB Editor and PCB drawings which contain the work sheet.

If yes, we can use an unfined work sheet template for both schematic and PCB.

If not, I think we need to have 2 seperate drawing templates, one is for schematics, one is for PCB.

OK, but I don’t quite understand. “Layer” has a specific meaning in the KiCad UI, namely the copper and technical layers in the PCB design. How could one use a sheet name as layer name? Talking about layers is what distracted me in this topic.

“Sheet” refers to schematic “pages” which exist only in the schematic, they can’t be used in the PCB in the worksheet. Footprints belong to symbols which belong to sheets, so it’s different, but it has nothing to do with layers or the worksheet.

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@JeffYoung
Gee, a whole four hours from Report issue to Fix-committed… amazing, thankyou.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you very much.

But, I found the milestone of it is version 7.0, does it mean that all the KiCAD 6 series version will not fix this issue?

In this case, the issue has a needs-cherry-pick tag which means that the fix will be brought back to the 6.0 branch (cherry-pick is git terminology for copying a change from one branch to another branch).

Jeff might be letting it sit in the 7.0 branch for a bit for some testing before bringing it back to 6.0, he’d have to tell us :slight_smile:

Yeah, generally speaking fixes sit in 7.0 for some time before being cherry-picked. The amount of time varies on the risk level of the fix, but is usually a few days up to 3 or 4 weeks.

This fix was fairly low risk, but the 6.0.6 release window is coming up so it probably won’t get cherry-picked until 6.0.7 opens up.

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