I love KiCad, but one of its limitations is that there is no build in mechanism for renumbering reference designators on the PCB and mapping that information back into the schematic.
RenumKiCadPCB is a feature rich command line utility for automatically renumbering the PCB reference designators on a KiCad PCB and then modifying the schematic.
The features are:
- Customized renumbering direction (ie upper left to lower right, left to right) for front side or back side of the board;
- Adjustable “jog” size reducing the need for precise placement of reference designators or modules for numbering;
- Sort by reference designator or module coordinates;
- Optional prepend strings for front and back (you can rename your back side components “B_R1” for fast location; and
- Optional reference designator start values for front or back side.
Update: I fired up my Ubuntu machine and verified the code makes and runs on Linux. gcc flagged two warnings which didn’t show up when I compiled under Windows Eclipse Neon so I fixed those and a minor bug which misreported run time if the run was aborted.
This ZIP file ( RenumKiCadPCB ) is V0.101 with those issues fixed. It contains a brief manual, the source code, an executable targeting Windows 64 bit OS, and the cygwin1.dll file needed to run it. In addition, it includes simple make instructions for Linux (i.e. just get the RenumKiCadPCB.c source file and type make RenumKiCadPCB.
The MD5 Hash for the Zip File is D39211EB3EB0F4C17F4A718CFD593B36
as determined by http://onlinemd5.com/
The code is written in very basic “c” so should be readily transportable to any Linux platform. I will compile a version for Windows 32. If there is interest I might put a graphical “wrapper” on it.
I’ve worked hard on the code but I can’t guarantee it will work in all circumstances. Use at your own risk.
Let me know by contacting me through this website if there are any bugs or features you would like to see.
Documented Designs 