Interactive labels

On 02.11.2016 08:02, Markus Rudolf wrote:

It would be cool if there are labels referencing a different sheet if I

could right click them and have a "show target" function e.g. it jumps

to the referenced sheet roughly focusing the referenced signal.

 

I'm just in the review of a 12 sheet large design and it would really

make the cross-checking easier...

I have written this ULP toolbox that does something similar and other

very useful functions for multi schematic and large designs. (To

install, see bottom)

This may do what you are after:Right click a part in sch/brd, and select

locate in brd/sch from the context menu. It will switch focus between

brd/sch for a selected part.

Another useful function is the "navigate" that lists all connections for

a specific net, and allows you to goto any of them. (I'm not happy with

the list format atm, it looks a bit messy, so I may change it in a

future version). It also does some ERC, but don't trust it blindly.

Another cool feature I have added is the "group segment past/upto via"

feature, that can group a full same-layer net segment by right clicking

a wire of it, so you can easily change layer for it all. You have the

choice to group upto or past vias.

NOTE:This can also be done on buses, but unfortunately the context menu

can not execute on groups, so you have to execute it manually.

If you group at least one wire of each signal in a bus and type "run

MLutils groupsignal", it will group all (same layer) of it, so you can

easily change layer of the full bus.

There are some other useful functions too, like polygon:move, ripup and

viacount, layers:hide, display affected.

I hope cadsoft reads this, maybe they can include some of these

functions in a future version, and keep developing this context menu

feature so this can look and function even more nice. Right now (7.7.0),

even polygon functions pop up when selecting a wire, and there are

missing objects that I would like to get my hands on through context menus.

To install this ulp, type "run MLutils install" in the command line. To

remove i, "run MLutils remove".

I hope cadsoft reads this, maybe they can include some of these

functions in a future version, and keep developing this context menu

feature so this can look and function even more nice. Right now (7.7.0),

even polygon functions pop up when selecting a wire, and there are

missing objects that I would like to get my hands on through context menus.

 

To install this ulp, type "run MLutils install" in the command line. To

remove i, "run MLutils remove".

 

Hi Morten,

I'm insulted, you know I check these blogs almost daily.

This is a really cool ULP, I'm enjoying the functionality of it.

Hopefully, once we get uploads up on the site again you can post it so

that others can benefit from it. That is if you want to of course.

Very cool.

Let me know what you would like to see added to the context menu

functionality so that I can prepare an ehancement report for it.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

On 02.11.2016 20:04, Jorge Garcia wrote:

I hope cadsoft reads this, maybe they can include some of these

functions in a future version, and keep developing this context menu

feature so this can look and function even more nice. Right now (7.7.0),

even polygon functions pop up when selecting a wire, and there are

missing objects that I would like to get my hands on through context

menus.

 

To install this ulp, type "run MLutils install" in the command line. To

remove i, "run MLutils remove".

 

 

Hi Morten,

 

I'm insulted, you know I check these blogs almost daily.

 

This is a really cool ULP, I'm enjoying the functionality of it.

Hopefully, once we get uploads up on the site again you can post it so

that others can benefit from it. That is if you want to of course.

 

Very cool.

 

Let me know what you would like to see added to the context menu

functionality so that I can prepare an ehancement report for it.

 

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

Thanks Jorge, I find it very useful myself too, and I keep adding stuff

to it. Yesterday, almost just after posting, I added a function that

renames pasted wires to the overlapping wires' name. Some time ago I

posted an suggestion for this to happen automatically when pasting

stuff, but I use this ULP until Eagle gets there

[By all means, feel free to "steal" or make any of these ULP functions

redundant by adding it to basic Eagle features.]

When it comes to improving the context menu functionality, I have

already posted a few suggestions, like "Adding stuff to group via

context menu", "set context submenus and spacer", "context on pin/pad"

and "SET CONTEXT context", but they all passed uncommented.

Here is a summary out of the top of my head:

In general, I would like as many object accessible as possible, and some

new like "group", "all" and maybe be able to combine multiple selected

objects into one set context command. For some objects, like polygons

containing wire, objects like brd.polygon.wire would be nice, to catch

polygon wires only. I have also suggested to add new items that is not

in the traditional GUI too, like pins and pads. The most interesting is

maybe the "group" object. See further down how I would like to see that

happen.

Also, the conflict explained with dual function of ingroup() would be

really nice (or even necessary!) to resolve. The way its done now

prevents context ULP's from adding stuff to the group. A new function

incontext() to pass the context selected objects [instead of using

ingroup()] would solve that, but it's already getting a bit late to

change. I wouldn't mind the change to happen "over night", because it

would open a lot of new functions to me. Maybe you can work out a

backward compatible way of splitting context selected objects, and

grouped objects,  like supporting a new "set ENHANCED_CONTEXT" feature

that passes the object in incontext(), and keep the old as is.

By doing this, you can also access grouped objects with a command like

"set ENHANCED_CONTEXT brd.group 'command'". If there are items in the

group, this needs to pop up in the context menu on any object. Note that

the current grouped objects need to be passed to the incontext space, so

that the function can keep adding objects to the ingroup space.

There is also a problem adding context stuff across sch/brd/lib

workspaces, like in my ULP, I couldn't get to the library polygon object

during install. This should be handled globally, maybe with prefix on

objects, like brd.wire and lib.wire.

Related to this problem, as this ULP grows, and maybe other users add

their context functions in ther own toolbox, I can see this is getting

pretty awkward to handle all the "plugins". Maybe you can come up with a

clever way to organize them? The keyword here may be "plugin"

Sorry for posting all this off topic, but I have to ride the wave now

that I got your attention on the subject

Awesome stuff!

Thanks!

Markus