KiPart: Another tool to create parts

[timofonic]

Hello.


There's another tool to create KiCad parts, KiPart:




http://kipart.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

https://github.com/xesscorp/KiPart


There's many tools addressing KiCad shortcomings, it seems.

I wonder if this makes KiCad developers think about future improvements and even considering the developers of these tools contribute their features to the main codebase in some way.

Is this something to consider after the stable release?

Regards.

[c4757p]

I'd love to see something like that integrated post-release. libedit indeed sucks donkeys. Many, many donkeys.

There's one developer, I think, who is actually planning on doing something like this.

[jancumps]

I've tried out KiPart, and it works perfectly. It's going to be a time saver - and a frustration prevention tool.
There's not much joy in creating a pin-rich symbol with mouse keyboard dialogs mix.

[c4757p]

I've tried out KiPart, and it works perfectly. It's going to be a time savere - and a frustration prevention tool.
There's not much joy in creating a pin-rich symbol with mouse keyboard dialogs mix.

You can use just the keyboard to speed it up, if you're clever - I've done 256-ball BGAs before that way and it wasn't too painful. The key is to sort the pins by type - get the electrical and graphical type fields filled out and then just do all the pins of that type in a row. Use P to call up the box, type name, <tab>, type number, enter, arrow down, repeat.

Not that that doesn't suck donkeys, but it sucks fewer than moving between keyboard and mouse repeatedly

[jancumps]

The two things that I find the nicest are thhat:
1: Dave has done the clever part for us

2: copy/paste all pin assignments from pdf datasheet to a spreadsheet works quite well in some cases. Half the work done.

[Wilksey]

I don't actually find it that bad to create library parts in KiCAD!

Am I one of very little?

Seems like a good tool though!

[timofonic]

I don't actually find it that bad to create library parts in KiCAD!

Am I one of very little?

Seems like a good tool though!

There are many third party utilities around KiCad that provides extra features to the built-in available ones. Part creation and library management are some of them.

I think that creativity could be integrated into the original tool and even encourage these developers to integrate these improvements into the main project.

I know this isn't easy to do and managing a team isn't easy at all, even some coders are really good ones but are lone cowboys. Anyway, I suspect KiCad suffered of some form of cowboy coding that still has some residuals of it (at least the code comments seems to be translated from French to English, for example).

[nctnico]

Use P to call up the box, type name, <tab>, type number, enter, arrow down, repeat.

That sounds exactly how Orcad Capture works / how I use that. Once you get the hang of using the keyboard shortcuts programs work much faster. Creating a CSV file sounds like a lot more work (typing) to me.

[c4757p]

Creating a CSV file sounds like a lot more work (typing) to me.

Not if you have a ton of pins and can copy and paste them from the datasheet, or even better, if the manufacturer provides a CSV (both Altera and Xilinx do).

[nctnico]

Even then I usually like my own naming convention better (more descriptive).