Skip to content

symbol editor: add visibility information to clarify selection

Description

Currently a number of pins can be stacked in a symbol, but there is no way to tell which ones have visibility set.

The menu is otherwise rather generous with information about the items, and usually it's the one visible pin one wants to edit. It might as well stick out a bit, e.g. by having a black symbol for active visibility (over gray ones). This ties in with the proposed improvement for visual connections in #4874 (closed).

image image

Maybe grayed-out symbols can be used to represent visibility? Or an allusion to the layer visibility symbols in the appearance panel?

mock-ups

image

(I personally prefer the grayed-out symbols as there is less detail to look at to understand the meaning).

Steps to reproduce

  1. open the Symbol editor
  2. select a part with stacked pins
  3. select the stack and clarify selection

KiCad Version

Version: (5.99.0-3256-gd52c475b), release build 
Application: LibEdit

Version: (5.99.0-3256-gd52c475b2), release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.0.5
	libcurl/7.71.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1g (Schannel) zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.3.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.3.0) libssh2/1.9.0 nghttp2/1.41.0

Platform: Windows 8 (build 9200), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW

Build Info:
	Date: Sep  8 2020 21:05:27
	wxWidgets: 3.0.5 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
	Boost: 1.73.0
	OCE: 6.9.1
	Curl: 7.71.0
	ngspice: 32
	Compiler: GCC 10.2.0 with C++ ABI 1014

Build settings:
	KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=OFF
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=OFF
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
	BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
	KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
	KICAD_SPICE=ON
Edited by MisterHW