Development

I thought it would be useful to list what I hope to put into future versions.

Note that I've just changed the order here. I felt it made most sense to start working towards PCB functionality sooner rather than later. Otherwise it will be harder to get the class hierarchy correct.

• 0.1.0 Flat schematics should work reasonably well here. There will still be work to do but the line has to be drawn somewhere. I will immediately begin making changes and additions for PCB functionality. This should begin quite shortly.
• 0.2.0 The first stab at PCB functionality should be working. This will not necessarily be linked to the schematic at this point, but we'll see.This is getting very close!
• 0.3.0 Hierarchical schematics should be working
• 0.4.0 Netlist generation (spice) should be functional. This should make for a somewhat useful program.

The following list should clarify my immediate goals. I'll try to keep these somewhat up to date but I'm sure I'll jump around a bit.

• Add a new EdaObject subclass for pads. This will encapsulate both the hole and a stack of copper layers.
• Add footprint functionality. This hopefully will be very similar to an EdaSymbol.
• Add footprint library functionality.

Here's a list of things which other people might want to investigate coding themselves. I would get around to them eventually but if one of you were looking for something to do on a rainy Saturday then it would be great to have some help!

• Adding a polyline or polygon EdaObject class
• Adding a bitmap EdaObjectclass
• Investigating drag and drop from the ProjectTree
• Making an interface for ProjectTree so the data could be from a server somewhere else. This is so a project could be edited by more than one person at once. Any other suggestions of how to do this would be great.
• Adding copy flavours other than text and EdaObjects. Wouldn't it be great if you could paste bitmaps or something like that.

Finally I thought I might list some of the key features and definitions in no particular order

• Symbols which you draw on a schematic are called "symbols" and are implemented by EdaSymbol
• Parts represent the information about a component on the part list. These are implemented by EdaPart and contain all the information about a particular component such as reference, symbol(s), footprint etc.
• When a symbol is added to the schematic a new part is also added to the part list
• A project is created with a part list.