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subc refdes text: dyntext and floater

floater by Tibor 'Igor2' Palinkas on 2017-10-19

Tags: spec, floater, dyntext, subc, refdes, value, footprint

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Abstract: Specify how the subc-refdes essential 'floater' and 'dyntext' features work.

  The last piece of the subc "refdes text" cleanup is done. The new code fits nicely into the new data model and pcb-rnd's approach: instead of hardwired hacks and side effects that happen to do The Right Thing for one specific case, provide a few, orthogonal features that can be combined to do the same thing, or 100 other things.

Old, pcb-mainline model: "element text"

An element has 3 hardwired text objects that have to contain the refdes, the value and the footprint name. Further limitations:

New, pcb-rnd subc model:

Instead of the bunch of hardwired properites and restrictions of an element text, subcircuits offer a set of orthogonal features that can be used to reproduce the behavior of element texts too, but can also be used more flexibly:

How to emulate the old behavior with the new features

To get a subc refdes that behaves the same as an element refdes text, except that it's only a refdes text and not a 3-fold "magic text":

Note: when you convert buffer to subc and it doesn't have a refdes text, the code automatically adds one, so you don't need to do this manually for each new subcircuit you draw.