Re: gEDA-user: More strange ideas: Start PCB layout from symbols view

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stefan Salewski wrote:
> Currently we start new layouts in PCB with a bunch of footprints auto
> dispersed.
> 
> As Kai-Martin said recently, position of symbols in schematics is
> closely related to position on PCB.
> 
> May it make sense to start a new PCB layout direct from a view with
> symbols? Clicking on a symbol (or selecting multiple identical) may pop
> up a selector box for footprint selection.
> 
> Of course this is fully incompatible with gEDAs current design.
> 

the code is there today, right now, that lets you launch pcb from a 
running instance of gschem and when you select a component in gschem, 
then pcb will automatically select it.  This cross probing works the 
other way around too.  Look for pcb.scm in the gschem config file.  It 
is commented out.  I haven't run it in a few years so YMMV.

Net probing won't work because gschem doesn't understand anything about 
connectivity.  That's also why we can't have a click-to plot interface 
for simulators.  Well that and because we don't have a consistent way of 
dealing with hierarchy from *inside* the tool.  I'm told having gschem 
being graphical only is a good thing.

Note that the C code which needed to be added to gschem to support this 
is totally generic and has nothing to do with pcb.  Everything PCB 
specific is contained in the scheme file.  Same is true for pcb.  The 
code which supports this is not at all tied to gschem.  However, I wrote 
those portions at the same time with the same emacs session.  I'm told 
this is a terrible thing and leads to dumbing down gschem and reducing 
how capable it is.



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