| 2016-04-10 14:54:40 |
Jason |
description |
The latest version of Pcbnew does not have any built-in way of selecting/placing components by reference designator. While clicking on components in Eeschema does work, this method becomes cumbersome for large layouts because it moves the view in Pcbnew each time. What is needed is a way to place a components by reference designator inside of Pcbnew.
He is an example of what this would look like:
* hit "P" for place component
* a dialog box pops which ask for a reference designator
* enter a component reference like "R1" and press enter
* Component "R1" is teleported to your cursor, selected/highlighted, and in move mode so that it can be immediately placed.
* click somewhere and the component is placed.
* done, repeat for next component.
At potential improvement would be to allow multiple reference designators to be entered separated by spaces "R1 R2 R3" to allow several parts to be automatically queued. Each placed one at a time in the order they were entered.
I would like to see what the general consensus is for this feature and if this feature is realistically implementable in Pcbnew. |
Updated:
This pertains to the "Get and Move Footprint" feature which can be invoked by pressing "T" and entering a single reference designator such as "R1".
Observations:
1. It is hard for inexperienced users to discover this feature since (apparently) it is not present in any of the context menus. It is only listed under the hotkey editor. The can be easily remedied by adding a "Get and Move Footprint" entry to the selection tool's context menu.
2. The "Get and Move Footprint" feature only supports placing one component at a time. If a user wishes to place a list of components in order (ie. R1, R2, R3), they must manually invoke the the tool for each component: entering the reference designator for a single component and placing it. While this is fine for small designs, it can significantly slow the placement phase of larger layouts.
What I propose, in the "Get and Move Footprint" feature if the user enters a single reference designator. ie. "R1", it acts normally. But, if the user enters multiple reference designators seperated by spaces, ie. "R1 R2 R3", then the placement tool is automatically invoked in order for each component entered. So, after "R1 R2 R3" was entered then the user would click a total three times to place each component in the list. This saves the user from having to stop and reenter reperence designators so often while they are placing components.
I would like to see what the general consensus is for this feature and if this feature is realistically implementable in Pcbnew. |
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