Allow annotations without a number

Bug #1660134 reported by Adam
28
This bug affects 6 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
KiCad
Triaged
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Another features which I have found missing are related to annotation in eeschema.
I suggest to:

1) Add options to annotate components in a selection (eg. a rectangular block), including in a reverse direction of current possibilities (sort by x or by y, which results in increase of designator always downwards or rightwards), and likewise, to clear annotation in a selection.

Recently I had a few schematics where there was a significant number (180 or 224) of the same components which for practical reasons should have had consecutive numbers 1-MAX, ordered in a few rows, in alternating order (to resemble the layout on the PCB). The current workaround was:
- place only those components in a grid layout,
- annotate them,
- Y-mirror every second row,
- add the remaining components,
- never ever clear annotation anymore.
This resulted in:
- having to repeat the whole operation when I decided to add more capacitors,
- gaps in designators (eg. C250, C251, C254, C255, ...), because having to annotate "manually" of course I have overlooked some, this is not critical, but makes maintaining a BOM more problematic.
The option as suggested would make things much easier and better.

2) Allow to use designators without a number.
It is a good practice to mark eg. connectors in a human readable form, like: VIN, VOUT, VBAT...
It is possible, but KiCAD forces an additional number: VIN1, VOUT1, VBAT1...
It's not critical, but the version without the number is just nicer.

If possible, the strings without a number (like "VIN"), and perhaps without any letter ("123") as well, could be fixed and just a possible duplicate could be reported.

Tags: eeschema
Revision history for this message
Eldar Khayrullin (eldar) wrote :

Using designators 'without any letter ("123")' - I'm for it.

tags: added: annotation designator eeschema
Changed in kicad:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
tags: removed: annotation designator
Jeff Young (jeyjey)
summary: - suggestions to improve eeschema in terms of annotation
+ Allow annotations without a number
Changed in kicad:
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
saper_2 (sapers-2) wrote :

I think "Annotation" should just check if there are "References" that ends with "?" , if yes then set number for those parts normally, otherwise (there is no "?" in Reference field) skip updating Ref. field for this part, and go for next.
I often name parts: R1A , R1B, R1C.... , whenever I want run BOM I got nag from Annotation and it always rename me those parts to R1A1 , R1B1,...

Revision history for this message
Jeff Young (jeyjey) wrote :

@saper_2, if you select the "Keep existing annotations" option in the Annotate dialog it will act like you're suggesting.

Revision history for this message
Doug Pearson (doug-pearson) wrote :

Note,: as of Version: (5.1.5)-3, release build, the "Keep existing annotations" option does not keep the Alpha only annotation.
Example "RST" gets converted to "RST1" by annotation regardless of the "Keep existing annotations" option.

Revision history for this message
frankpp (frank-pioch) wrote :

This issue is still in Kicad 5.1.9!
So I2C becomes I2C1, any plan to remove this issue?

Revision history for this message
Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw) wrote : Re: [Bug 1660134] Re: Allow annotations without a number

The project has moved to GitLab. This bug is still open and can be found
at https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2403.

On 3/7/21 11:20 AM, frankpp wrote:
> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 1827503 ***
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1827503
>
>
> This issue is still in Kicad 5.1.9!
> So I2C becomes I2C1, any plan to remove this issue?
>

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