How to select one of the overlapping objects in  gEDA PCB  tool? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: zzsczz
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 28, 2024, 01:47:57 pm
content: I want to select a part on board and see the detail information of the part.When the mouse cursor is on the origin point of U1, I use info->generate object report to see what is there.I get a fragment of trace on top layer. See the select_trace.pngI can get U1's info by hide signal layers or change to the empty layer that there is nothing at the U1's origin point ,then generate object report.see the select_u2.png.Is there any methord to select one of the overlapping objects ?the pcb is zynq_som_2.pcb ofhttps://github.com/gabriel-tenma-white/sdr5

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2024, 04:13:54 pm
content: I waited a few days on purpose before responding, but it seems unlikely you would get much of an answer to your question. gEDA has received very little development over 10 or so years. Even their website:www.geda-project.orghas not worked of the last 3 days.I also had a look at:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDAand apparently they did release a stable version in 2020 and that surprised me.I used gEDA myself for a short while some 8 to 10 years ago. It's user interface was archaic but "usable", but after drawing a few schematics I wanted to make a PCB and the user interface was completely different. It had the look and feel of two completely separately developed programs that got glued together at some point in time. I was not happy about that and decided to spend some serious amount of time on reviewing PCB design programs. I had a list of around 8 programs, and the 3rd or 4th I reviewed was KiCad. KiCad was quite clunky back then (for example library management was broken) but it also had a lot of things I liked. Back then it had a very good "Getting started with KiCad" guide, and with that I designed my first PCB in a single afternoon after installing KiCad. KiCad also ticked all the other important boxes. It's completely FOSS (which is important to me), and it was being actively developed. Unfortunately far to many FOSS projects fail to gain a big enough community to become successful projects. KiCad however is flourishing. Development speed is increasing, and it is now at a quite astonishing height for a FOSS project. Bugs get fixed quickly, lots of new features get added annually (yearly mayor version cycle) It has a big user community, an active forum where people get lots of help when needed.All these things combined resulted in aborting the review process I was doing. I just started using KiCad and did not even look at the other programs on my list. And I am very happy with the progress KiCad has made over the years. KiCad has all I want (and more) for a PCB design program.KiCad is not a magic bullet. It can't do everything (regarding PCB design), and some people are better off with other PCB design software. But if you are using gEDA now, then you are almost certainly working on a hobby level for PCB design, and don't want / need the "advanced" things.And even if you don't like KiCad for some reason, unless gEDA has made huge progress in the last 7 years (which seems unlikely, although wikipedia does give a hint in that direction) then almost any EDA suite is likely to be better then gEDA.Also, if you started with gEDA because of this zynq project, there are several (5+) open source/hardware zynq projects for KiCad too. For example:https://github.com/julianfl0w/zynqPCBhttps://github.com/ciaa/Hardware/tree/master/PCB/ACC/CIAA_ACCAnd Zynq is quite popular, so you there are probably projects for other EDA suites around too.And last. KiCad can also create a PCB project from back-importing a set of gerber files. The process is not perfect (for example footprint information is simply not present in gerber files) and therefore some significant rework is needed after the conversion, but the conversion is good enough to be an advantage.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2024, 04:47:34 pm
content: AFAIK gEDA (schematics) and PCB (board design) where never developed as 1 package. And frankly it doesn't have to be. I've used several combinations of schematics and PCB packages over the decades.It might be helpful to know which version of PCB the project is for. IIRC some people have forked PCB into PCB-new several years ago and have done quite a bit of work on it.

author: zzsczz
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 01, 2024, 03:43:47 pm
content: Thanks for providing the information.The projects that you provided are great, but they are too complicated for me.The sdr5 project is described inhttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/4-layer-board-for-zynq-and-ddr3/The autor of sdr5 said " full 32 bits DDR3 on a 4 layer board while having >70% read/write eye at 1066MT/s".I have convert the sdr5 project( ddr3 's singnals occupy two layers ) to gerber files and imported 2 of the gerber files to eagle. see "Screenshot 2024-02-01 225616.png" in Attach.1 import gerber files to eagle's layout editor.2 create sch ,add component and change to layout editor.3 put the added footprint in the exact same position on gerber track( I check the component's name in gEDA PCB and calculate the position in eagle ).4 rename the gerber track's name to the net name in sch .5 add via and name it according to net name.6 remove redundant tack.It's simple physical work . I can clear one to three net in an hour . The whole work may last a week or two. May some ULPs can speed up the process.The process is described in the thread:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/kicad/convert-pcb-from-geda-to-kicad-format/I tried kicad7. kicad7 can import gerber files but can not save layout. I guess the reason is that new version kicad default settings force synchronization form sch to pcb.The process that eagle imports gerber files(version 7.5 or up is supported.) is described inI will study gEDA in this year , start from pcb-rnd. Kicad can import footprint form gEDA format. The sch can be recreated for learning purpose . May a netlist format can be choosed for saving the sch recreating process.

author: zzsczz
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 01, 2024, 04:00:19 pm
content: I use gEDA 1.8.2-6 and pcb 4.0.2-4 in ubuntu 18.04 WSL.I have exported the sdr5 project to gerber files .I try the latest pcb-rnd 。 pcb-rnd can select element by name

author: anon1991
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 09, 2024, 07:13:25 am
content: There are multiple solutions: change layer visibility (only visible objects are clickable), activate the layer the target object is on (objects on current layer has precedence).Meanwhile gEDA is being removed from Debian, seehttps://geda.pages.devwhich will make it harder to use gschem or gEDA/pcb long term.I recommend using pcb-rnd, that has more ways for resolving the overlapping object problem.