KiCAD separate different versions of PCBs

[anso-engineer]

Hello, let's imagine I have one schematic and after I need to create similar with additional feature (e.g. battery protection). For the furture perspetives I need them both.
Somewhere in YouTube I saw as guy crated the second sch file in the project, but not sure if it convinent. And pcb file will also be different.

So, what is the practical way? Maybe createing the separated proect "...v2" will be easiser solution? Or maybe there is some hidden features as version control?

[voltsandjolts]

Can you design it such that you have one schematic and one PCB, with different components fitted for the two different products?

[anso-engineer]

I can't

[voltsandjolts]

AFAIK KiCAD is very much designed as a one schematic, one PCB system.
There are hacks for one schematic, multiple PCBs but you probably don't want to go there.

So perhaps best to make your base project, then duplicate it and make changes for your second PCB product.

[Geoff-AU]

you can have variants (as in, separate BoMs) where your battery protection is DNP/DNL when it's not required.  But the schematic/PCB would be the same.

[Whales]

I use the File -> Save A Copy feature in PCBNew to keep revisions or variants of boards I think I want to go back to.

Pros: you can open up these old revisions at the same time as the current revision, and copy+paste things across.

Cons: these separate copies get "unlinked" from the schematic.  I think you can work around this by saving a copy of the schematic with the same name as the copy of the PCB, but I have not tried it.

[xvr]

Different PCBs naturally require different designs. You can use hierarchical design to create two projects with a common part.
Simply create a hierarchical module with the common part of your schematic. Then include it in both projects—the top-level schematic of each project will contain only the different parts of the schematic and one hierarchical module with the common part.
The module's schematic itself can be shared between both projects by including it in one of them and creating a symbolic link from it to the other project.

[paulca]

git branches.

Works perfectly fine.  I have about 3 different versions of he Z80 build, only one of them was actually produced, but I can just say:

git checkout Version2

and assuming KiCad is closed (wise!) open it and find... Version 2.

It does have caveats of course.  Any externally referenced symbol or footprint isnot version controlled. 

However.... version controlling your actual "library" files is wise too.