Re: gEDA-user: footprint=none

[Bill Wilson <billw@wt.net>]

On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 20:49:40 -0500
Dan McMahill <dan@mcmahill.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 03:33:50PM -0600, Bill Wilson wrote:
> > On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 13:30:09 -0500 (EST)
> > sdb@cloud9.net (Stuart Brorson) wrote:
> > 
> > > > To cover the bases, I could make gsch2pcb aware of a "none" footprint...
> > > 
> > > This seems to be emminently sensible.  There are plenty of times one
> > > wants to include a "footprintless" part in a schematic, but not have
> > > it upset the netlister/pcb package.
> > 
> > I'll do that then.
> > 
> 
> sometimes I set footprint=none on a sort of generic connector symbol to make
> sure that I don't forget to override it at the schematic level.

OK, I've put up a new gsch2pcb tarball:

    http://web.wt.net/~billw/gsch2pcb/gsch2pcb-1.3.tar.gz

and tuned the footprint handling to make gsch2pcb usage slightly more
convenient:

1) For symbols that have no footprint attribute give a warning
   and don't write an unfound package line into the output PCB file.
   However, if any such symbols have net connections they will be in the PCB
   netlist.

2) For symbols that have the attribute footprint=none give a warning
   and don't write an unfound package line into the output PCB file.
   So having the "none" footprint can serve as a generic place holder
   where multiple real footprints are candidates and the gsch2pcb
   warning serves as a reminder that one of them should be chosen.

3) New option "empty-footprint name".  If specified (probably in a project
   file), then for symbols that have a footprint set to that name no warning
   is given (unless the verbose option is given) and nothing is written
   into the output PCB file.
   This just gives a convenient way to have symbols in a schematic which
   will not be mounted on the PC board and to shut up gsch2pcb warnings
   about it.  However, if net connections are made to these symbols, they
   will be in the PCB netlist and PCB will warn if the netlist is loaded
   and never consider the layout complete.
   So, maybe connections to such parts could be drawn with a graphical
   line and not a net?

   If "none" is specified as the empty-footprint, eg. the project file has:
       empty-footprint none
   then there are no warnings (unless verbose) and "none" will no
   longer be useful as a place holder as described in 2).

Bill