"BOM only" symbols in EESchema

[Andy Peters]

This is a wishlist item.

Some workflows like to have symbols in the schematic for non-PCB-mounted things, such as screws and other mounting hardware and what-not. These parts show up in the BOM that is generated from the schematic.

To handle this, I have created a generic symbol called HW. This symbol doesn't have anything in the footprint field. It does, however, have a custom "PN" field. I place the symbol on the schematic (it's just a box) and edit the PN field appropriately and generate the BOM, and that works well.

When a PCB netlist is generated and imported into PCB, there is an obvious error: "Footprint not found for symbol HW1." And that's easily ignored, but also nobody likes seeing ERRORS in netlist imports.

So what would be nice would be for a symbol to have an option of some kind that says "BOM only" or "No footprint" or something else obvious, and when EESchema generates the pcbnew netlist, those symbols with that option enabled are simply not put into the netlist.

[Chris Pavlina (pavlina-chris)]

Maybe we shouldn't give an ERROR for a part that doesn't *have* a footprint, and only for one that has a footprint but it's missing.....

[Blair Bonnett (bcb)]

Personally I think this is a situation where explicit is better than implicit. If I add a handful of components to an existing board and then miss adding one footprint in cvpcb then I'd like an error to come up when importing the netlist. A tickbox or type selector for BOM only means I have deliberately excluded it from the netlist, not accidentally.

[Chris Pavlina (pavlina-chris)]

That's fair, I agree.

[Andy Peters (devel-latke)]

Blair,

Yes, definitely this will need a checkbox for "opt in" to the netlist exclusion.

[ikletti (ikletti)]

+1 from me.

This would be especially useful for schematics that include panel-mounted components with corresponding PCB connectors (like D-Sub front panel connectors with solder cups and solder terminals on the PCB, panel-mounted switches, etc.)

[Novak Tamas (novak-7)]

I have a schematic lib component "no-pin" and also a footprint without any pads. They can be created without any problems, can have reference, can be contained in netlist, and will be shown in BOM. I place their reference and value out of the board's outline.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

I like Tommy's (Novak Tamas') solution in comment #6.

If we implement a no-netlist option, then it's only a matter of time before another bug comes up with "add BOM-only components to netlist for feature XYZ".

[Kees (cbmhessels)]

Yes please

[ROUX (dad33)]

Hello,
I tried the solution of Novak Tamas in Kicad 5.1.2
But it doesn't worked !
The footprint I made with the name and the ref** give me this error message : "Validation conflict".
Do you have a solution ?
The possibility to include component in eeschema / exclude in PCBnew is important for the reasons already described !
Thank you for your response !

[ROUX (dad33)]

I finally succeeded the solution of Novak Tamas : the name of the footprint included a space, which is not allowed.
I hope it won't make a mistake in the Gerber file.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

This issue has already been fixed and the Launchpad issue tracker is no longer used. The project has moved to GitLab.