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  • Author Author: shabaz
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Using Buses in Circuits with KiCad 7

shabaz
Using Buses in Circuits with KiCad 7

This topic is a bit fiddly to describe in words, so I hope the video will suffice. This blog won't have much text : ( I feel like a Ronin when I'm not having to type though! : (

  • in reply to shabaz

    (can't edit; sorry that was supposed to be a reply to  )

  • in reply to Andrew J

    Decided to create a quick video showing the proposal for the "Unfold from Bus" feature request. I've added it to the feature request. 

  • in reply to shabaz

    (can't edit).

    This was the proposal:

    (1) Press W (wire) when on bus, instead of right-clicking. By doing that, KiCad should infer the user wishes to draw a signal belonging to the bus, and automatically display all the items in the bus, in columns, or in one large matrix. What I mean by columns, is that one column could contain (say) ADDR15, ADDR14, ADDR13 etc, and the next column beside it would display DATA7, DATA6, and so on, for all the items in the bus label definition.

    (2) User clicks on the signal name.

    (3) The user now clicks to place the wire, and continues just_as_if_they_were_drawing_a_wire. In other words,KiCad does not stop drawing the wire (as it does with the current unfold behavior), and the user can complete the wire connection all the way to the destination component, at which point Kicad stops drawing the wire of course, but remains in wire mode. In addition, as soon as the wire drawing is stopped, KiCad automatically places a label against the first horizontal or vertical wire segment closest to the bus, with the text orientation aligned with the bus if there is no other text orientation within 2.55 mm to copy the orientation from. An alternative method of inferring the text orientation would be to store the current text orientation used on a bus, and then repeat it every time. If the user subsequently changes the text orientation on a label that belongs to a bus, then store that text orientation.

  • in reply to baldengineer

    Done!

    https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/15310

    I think if they implemented that, it would speed up the implementation to be more efficient that EAGLE, and more intuitive, and in a way that still (to me) seems consistent with KiCad UI type behavior.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Gitlab issue / feature request is the way to go. You can open up a discussion about it on the KiCad forum to get wider feedback and then link to it from the issue.

    But the developers definitely look at the issue list for deciding what to work on next. (Jon is one of the lead developers. He hangs out in the KiCad Discord. I think he has a macro key to write "can you please create a gitlab issue for that?")