Re: gEDA-user: attribute edit 'ee'

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 3, 2009, at 3:37 AM, Josh Jordan wrote:

>
>    I have two symbols of a transistor.  One of them is made by  
> editing a
>    transistor symbol file and filling out the attributes and adding a
>    digikey= attribute to store part number.  The second symbol is  
> made by
>    loading the basic transistor symbol and adding my attributes in the
>    schematic editor.
>    The first symbol only 4 attributes are editable, device, value,
>    refdes, and footprint while description, author, and digikey do not
>    show up in the 'ee' dialog box.  The second symbol, all of the
>    attributes I added while in the schematic hierarchy are editable in
>    the 'ee' window.  Where does it decide what attributes to show  
> or not
>    show?  I have looked through the source and can't figure this out.
>    Thanks.
>

Attributes attached to a specific instance of the symbol in the  
schematic are editable with "ee" at the schematic level.

Attributes that only appear within the symbol file itself are not  
editable at the schematic level. You may edit the symbol file itself  
(go into it with "Hs"). That will affect all instances of that symbol  
that don't override the attribute in question. So, if you want to  
change the digikey= attribute for all instances of the symbol, use  
"Hs" to go into the symbol and edit it there.

Attributes attached to the symbol at schematic level override  
attributes within the symbol. So, if you want a particular instance  
to have a different digikey= attribute, use "aa" to attach one.

When you place a symbol instance in a schematic, some attributes are  
"promoted": they are copied and attached to the symbol instance.  
Several entries in the gafrc files control this process. Recent gEDA  
releases have (always-promote-attributes "footprint device value  
model-name") in system-gafrc. This is perhaps good for small projects  
that only use the distributed libraries, but for big projects using  
custom symbols you won't want to promote so many (unless you enjoy  
hand-editing hundreds of attributes to change a single property of a  
common part).

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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