Hello, Kristoffer! On 2017-01-14 11:43, Kristoffer Ödmark wrote: > The conceopt is amazing, the idea of realtime really intrigues me.
There are some more crazy ideas in my head. Imagine rigid body dynamics applied to PCB design to Push & Shove traces as well as components (as long as they are not locked in place)... physics engines are out there - propably they are not only useful in computer games. Or: You layout your PCB with components spread out wide. Then you hit a button turning all traces into virtial elastic bands shrinking your design to a minimal area as far as designrules (causing collisions) allow. > parallels to how when I use vias, > I have a component for them, and when for some reason I have to change the > minium via size, then > I just replace all instances of the VIA-0.25mm with another footprint > VIA-0.30mm for example. IMO vias are not footprints. They don't have references, don't get assembled, they can get optimized away (removed) automatically. They can become testpoints for flying probe/ICT, ... > How I would like to use PDR is similar to how I use footprints. Assign a > layout to a schematic. > Basically I would want a new type of "component/part/layout" that I can add > to either schematic > or pcbnew item. But instead of having a separate symbol and footprint, this > would mean a file/folder > containing both a symbol and layout(s) ( .sweet + .pretty = .cake ? ), I will > call them cakes from now on =) Reusing proven parts of a previous layout can be a great feature. But what happened to me is that I needed a technology change - replace all RLC footprints from 1608M (0603) to 1005M (0402) of such a reuse. Or there is a need for an update from a library to replace all rectangular footprints with rounded rectangles to reduce tombstoning. This could all be possible with table based design entry and database operations (search & replace in selection)... Btw. reinventing pretty names could be fun, but it raises the barrier to migrate for designers who where using other tools. KISS. > This way when updating the layout, It would be easy to propagate it to every > other .cake object in > the layout the same way you do with footprints, keeping the KiCAD workflow > intact. Basically yes. An intelligent copy/store, load/paste feature might speed up the design quite a lot, if it's done properly. Regards, Clemens _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp