KiCad Partslist Editor

KiCad Partslist Editor (PLE) allows you to export/import customizable fields from a hierarchical KiCad schematic file to and from a CSV.

• Load the root sheet of your project
• export the CSV file
• edit this CSV in your favourite spreadsheet editor (e.g. LibreOffice Calc)
• backimport this CSV into KiCad PLE and save your changes then to your schematic files.

Tested with Python 3.5.2 on Linux Mint 18, with KiCad 4.0.7 and KiCad 5 (nightly)

Installation

Windows

Running KiCad Partslist-editor using windows, requires either Python 3 and TKinter, or you can run the compiled version, which can be found in the folder \build\exe.win32-3.4\

Linux

On linux you have to install python3 and python3-tk with
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-tk

Then you can run the part list editor with python3 PartsListEditor.py or just use the minimal shell script kicad-partlist-editor-linux.sh

Usage

• The 'Load Schematic' button, allows one to open the kicad .sch files, which subsequently parses the selected schematic file and all its hierarchical daughter modules.

• Hitting the 'Export CSV' button will allow you to save a .CSV file containing the parsed contents of the schematic files.

• The 'Import CSV' button lets you select the csv file containing the the partslist as generated by KiCad PLE including the edits as made by the user using an external program.

• The 'Save Schematic' button updates the schematic files with the updated information as loaded through the 'Import CSV' operation.

NOTE: the columns Reference, Unit and File must not be edited in the CSV file.

Deprecated

These functions need a scrollable canvas to be useful.

• 'List Parts' shows the parts of the opened schematic in the GUI.
• 'Sort Parts' will sort the parts list in alphabetic order.

Advanced Usage

To change the fields that the KiCad PLE imports, exports and edits, edit the FieldKeywords.conf file

The syntax of the FieldKeywords.conf file is: First line is version string, this should not be changed Lastline is end-of-file indicator

All lines starting with "<" define a field KiCad PLE will look for in .SCH files

The syntax of such a line is as follows:

<Fieldname|Field_alias1|Field_alias2|Field_alias3>

The Fieldname is the primary alias, so it can be considered Field_alias0 as well.

The amount of aliases which can be added is theoretically unlimited, but the minimum is 1 (i.e. the field name)

<MyFieldName> isn't supported, one has to declare it with an alias:
<MyFieldName|MyFieldName>

Further Ideas for Improvement

Extract Field Names from Schematics and CSV

• obsolete FieldKeywords.conf
• type of fields are managed by project data without metadata
• new fields can be defined by the CSV
• redundant field names can easily be merged within CSV-spreadsheet with 'auto-filter'

Index Column

• index column 'Index' with a line counting number
• gives ability to sort the list and do a proper file comparison with diff after manipulations

Commandline Interface

For scripting it would be nice, if the PLE could be used without any GUI.