Hi There! I constantly run into issues where I need to add all sorts of metadata to my sometimes 100+ parts schematics which are saved in an external inventory system. Initially doing it by hand I grew tired of it and decided to whip up a slightly less laborious way using a plugin approach which is quite flexible in terms of datasources. Also updating those is even worse.
I was interested if this is something Kicad would be interested in taking over for the broader public. I hooked it into the 'Symbol Properties' or 'Symbol Fields Table' dialog for ease of use and touched that existing code only marginally. <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#m_-4237403401938012105_expected-behavior>Quick Overview: When I have selected a schematic symbol from the standard library, I'd like to be able to open the 'Symbol Properties' or 'Symbol Fields Table' to fetch part information from an external source. Idea: Eeschema would simply provide a framework which connects to one or more plugins and the plugins themselves would be provided by the community as .dll or .so which then are saved somewhere on the computer and simply loaded when needed. The plugin can be programmed in any language such as python, java, c# etc. and would only need to honour the defined C wrapper interface. Plugins which don't adhere to that are simply ignored. I have created a first draft of that framework to solve a laborious task I face once in a while and am wondering if this is something that is generally useful for the broader public. I also programmed a plugin for Inventree which is used here as part database. In general: the framework is intended to use multiple plugins at the same time so that a user could potentially query for example Mouser, Digikey, Navision and Inventree at the same time. <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#m_-4237403401938012105_the-workflow>The workflow: <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#m_-4237403401938012105_a-brand-new-project-would-be-to>A brand new project would be to: - select a symbol from the standard kicad library - open plugin search and search for the specific part - transfer all metadata automatically into your schematic <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#m_-4237403401938012105_existing-project>Existing project: - Open fields editor and bulk apply metadata using the above mentioned approach. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "KiCad Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to devlist+unsubscr...@kicad.org. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CABQVKmKZAQtXZ-gdQOJiHGH_vJmwfU5Ho%3DCAaMtM_YD2PbZteQ%40mail.gmail.com.
