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Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 20:28:21 +0200 (CEST)
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To: "James Battat (jbattat AT wellesley DOT edu) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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Subject: Re: [geda-user] [pcb-rnd] up next: subcircuits (a.k.a. footprint
 model redesign)
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Hello James,

On Tue, 30 May 2017, James Battat (jbattat AT wellesley DOT edu) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:

> Igor2, all,
>
> I'd be very happy to provide testing for any improvements on how to specify 
> and re-use a layout for a collection of footprints.
>
> Specific example: say I'm designing a board that reads out 24 temperature 
> sensors (RTDs).  Each RTD channel has a pair of op-amps and surrounding 
> circuitry, with identical layout.  Can I specify/layout a single channel, and 
> then tell pcb-rnd to repeat this layout for the other 23 channels? (without 
> manually updating the REFDES for each component in channels 2-24)? This may 
> already be possible, but I don't know how to do it...


Long term goals include subcircuit-in-subcircuit, maybe supporting 
hierarhical netlist too, and when these happen, your use case will become 
a trivial addition on top of the strong infrasucture.

However, please note that even small parts of this infrastructural 
change is very expensive and will take long. I'd be happy if we got only 
the first 3 stages I listed in the original mail finished in the next 2 
development cycles. And that means we "only" replaced the old footprint 
model with subcircuits.

How fast we get to solve your example use case also depends on how fast we 
get the basics (subcircuits as footprint replacement) stable. So please 
stay tuned and test the new code as it's being implemented.

Best regards,

Igor2