footprints with multiple physical components

[Simon Richter]

There are several ready-to-use modules out there that use multiple connectors in a fixed arrangement, e.g. Arduino modules or the XBee.

For assembly, these need multiple entries in the part placement table, so it would be great if there was a way to create footprints consisting of an arrangement of other footprints, and have all sub-footprints show up on the BOM and in the placement table.

Difficulties are creating a consistent numbering (should the component use a range of references in the schema already?) and existing assumptions in the codebase about 1:1 mappings.

[Novak Tamas (novak-7)]

What I do now :
- I have a pre-made schema with connectors of module, and a pcb where these connectors' footprints are locked in position.
- I make a new project
- add hierarchical sheet
- import module's schema into hierarchical sheet
- manually annotate connectors to the appropriate names from pre-made module-pcb. <- ***
- make the schema of the whole circuit
- annotate with "keep existing annotation"
- out of KiCad I copy module pcb_new to project dir, and rename file to match project
- netlist export/import... module connectors are intact on pcb, all remaining footprints are to place.

An option would be fine for the *** step above: when importing a schema into hierarchical sheet original refs should survive. (I mean CN2 shouldn't reset to CN?).

Above procedure works for only having a single module in my project.

An "importing of hierarchical project" function could be even better with
- importing schema into hierarchical sheet (with refs intact),
- also importing pcb with footprints locked. After importing all footprints and tracks keep selected to be moved to new location.

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2027