auto-assign footprints in Kicad?

[awallin]

Hi all,

I'm coming from a PADS background and want to learn Kicad...
One of the biggest issues I guess people have with Kicad is the separate footprint assignment step between the schematic editor and the pcb editor.
In PADS a schematic symbol is usually associated with one, sometimes two or three variants, of a PCB footprint. Before exporting the schematic to the pcb-editor it's possible to select which footprint each schematic symbol should have (if there are many).

Is there a way of building kicad libraries so that the footprint assignment could be automated?
Is there already work in this direction?

AW

[djsb]

I am subscribed to the Kicad developers mailing list and there are a lot of new changes coming in the form of libraries (Git based) and python scripting (presently in unstable development branches). I don't recall anyone mentioning changes to CVPCB specifically though as most of the new developments (including those contributed by CERN) are centred around PCBNew.
I might be a good idea to join the user group on Yahoo or explore the launchpad developer site as well as the Wiki.
All links to the above can be found via Google.

David.

[awallin]

Work package 8 over here seems very close to what I am used to from PADS:
http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cern-kicad/wiki/WorkPackages