eeschema: wish: schematic with many sheets: more adjustable annotation

[Anton Savov]

Application: kicad
Version: 5.0.0+dfsg1-2~bpo9+1, release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.2
    libcurl/7.52.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 libidn2/0.16 libpsl/0.17.0 (+libidn2/0.16) libssh2/1.7.0 nghttp2/1.18.1 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux 4.9.0-8-rt-amd64 x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Build Info:
    wxWidgets: 3.0.2 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 2.24
    Boost: 1.62.0
    OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.8.0
    Curl: 7.52.1
    Compiler: GCC 6.3.0 with C++ ABI 1010

Build settings:
    USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
    USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
    KICAD_SPICE=OFF

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Hierarchical sheets are quite useful, also annotating with the "*100" rule is useful because you can tell a group of components on the PCB are related just by seeing their numbers.
However, when i have a schematic with 10 or more pages and use the "*100" rule - at some point i'll get R1001, or IC1301.. four digits, quite long.

Now, in a specific situation i had a schematic with 20 sheets, and i really wanted to be able to use the "*100" rule only on five of those sheets (which are somehow more important) and perhaps also make them start from 500 (so one page starts from 500, then 600, 700, 800, 900), while for all other sheets which i don't care about, i could use the normal rule, to get smaller labels, thus i won't have 4-digit refdes.
Another example is where i used a hierarchical sheet where i had two kinds of sub-circuits, repeated 8 times, so 16 sheets just for that alone.

i could imagine having an editbox (or something) in the properties of a hierarchical sheet instance, that offers overriding of the annotation starting offset.
then, for a given sheet instance i could set it to 500 and annotation of that sheet will begin from 500 (or is it 501?) upwards.
a value of 0 would be equal to "don't care" and thus annotation will happen the way the annotation dialog dictates (as always).

[Hildo Guillardi Júnior (hildogjr)]

This, in my user opinion, is the big limitation as a schematic software. I have the same problem, usually I repeat conditioning and measure circuits. I already had schematic with more the 30 printed page, but just 10 really different sheets.