KiCon 2023 Database Libraries

A walkthrough from Jon Evans of how Database Libraries work and some useful examples of how to use this feature of KiCad to integrate with other software tools in your workflow. Q&A follows the talk.
Slides are available at kicon.kicad.or...
KiCon 2023 was held in A Coruña, Spain, September 9-10 and brought together KiCad lead developers, hardware designers, plugin developers and electronic engineers from around Europe and Africa. More information can be found at kicon.kicad.org
KiCon 2023 was made possible by @digikey @uxvtechnologies @PCBWay @kicadservicescorporation4672

[@Mtaalas]

This is one of the biggest things to come to Kicad. I can't live without database libraries after Altium showed me how powerful they are... Small part at a time and Kicad will get there to be the industry standard!

[@lhxperimental]

Exactly. Opensource allows entities with resources, hobbyist, people with deep skills & ideas to all work on a single platform. Today the professionals work with expensive tools which are not available to everyone, these create an entry barrier and unnecessary friction. In the next few years one should be able to hit a button within KiCad to place an order and set the global supply chain in motion to get them their assembled PCB delivered within a few days with all cost and time optimizations taken care of by the platform.

[@FimaMillston]

Very interesting. And the polite and precise answers to questions. Thank you!

[@TheHareidGamer]

This is extremely promising, excellent talk and host!

[@mr_gerber]

This was a really good presentation. After seeing the discussions that have been on the KiCAD user forum and how much misunderstandings there were in those, I think this was useful.

[@Muny]

Excellent, clear presentation Jon. Thanks for the overview on this feature. I was very glad to see it added

[@JismalJamal]

I am glad database is there this was the limiting feature which made my colleagues stay away for long. Also Kicad + Octopart or Digikey API will be just cherry on top.

[@GFScreech]

Second that, manfacturer part search like Altium will be the cherry on top. If Altium allows Octopart to be used.

[@HansWurst-bk9sb]

What I do use (and think might be interesting) are two columns that save timestamps of when rows in a dblib were created ("date_added") or updated ("date_updated"). The first one is set by creation of the row using CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. The date_update column is set be a trigger: CREATE TRIGGER [DATE_UPDATED_RESISTOR] AFTER UPDATE ON Resistor FOR EACH ROW WHEN OLD.date_updated = NEW.date_updated OR OLD.date_updated IS NULL BEGIN UPDATE Resistor SET date_updated=CURRENT_TIMESTAMP WHERE part_id=NEW.part_id; END Also, a nice feature is that KiCad can use views as tables to filter (for example deactivate parts that have NRND status or similar)

[@maykol161]

This will save a lot of time when generating BOM

[@GFScreech]

This is great, I always had an issue with the KiCad library.

[@marshallscholz8629]

Can this support arbitrary library hierarchies? so I can finally have separate nested folders for each of something like "connectors -> jst -> sh -> smd -> right angle -> [actual list of connector components]" instead of making convoluted component names so they get alphabetically sorted?

[@BHBalast]

Great question, have you found an answer?

[@marshallscholz8629]

@@BHBalast It can not unfortionately. Kicad is lagging behind in this area. The main thing it does is allow you to use the same symbol/footprint across multiple parts. So for a resistor you just add a new part with the updated value and part number and you can easially add a whole series of parts without recreating a bunch of symbols. Now if only you could sort those boatload of parts you just made.

[@kralsam2]

Thank you your presentation. I found my fault of Our my db integration problem. The value attribute was not turning on automatically. I found my fault. I used {... : "true",}. But I was should {.... : true, }

[@Jacos7rid3RduPreez]

Can you add multiple symbols per component in 7.x or only in 8.x?

[@CaseyHancocki3luefire]

so this is live in 7.0 ?

[@HansWurst-bk9sb]

Yes

[@RemiBusseuil]

A shame it has no GUI. That will deter 99.999999999999% of the users