# Searching for Parts and marking them on screen (in gerbv)

    Searching for Parts and marking them on screen (in gerbv)

    THIS FUNCTIONALITY IS ONLY AVAILABLE WHEN COMPILING GERBV AGAINST GTK2!

    Please direct any comments, suggestions etc. to Juergen <juergenhaas@gmx.net>
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    ***  Support for Pick and Place files:                                   ***
    ***  csv-style files with/without quotes                                 ***
    ***  the following delimiters are supported ';' ':' '|' ','              ***
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A pick and place file has 11 columns (the first two lines a file in gerbv/examplei
    are shown here) and looks like this:

    Designator:Footprint:Mid X:Mid Y:Ref X:Ref Y:Pad X:Pad Y:Layer:Rotation:Comment

    R29:0805_REFL:25.4mm:72.644mm:25.4mm:72.644mm:25.4mm:71.6788mm:T:90.00:1K/1%
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Some instructions for the first time user:

    after loading a PNP file a new dialog will come up offering various option of
    selecting and graphically marking electronic parts.

    Three modes of selecting items do exist:
    1)enter any search phrase and hit enter
         (See also paragraph "SCROLLING" further down)
            -Generally under linux regexp expressions are used such as ".*" i.e. '*'
            -All matches will be marked in the list AND on the screen
            -if you press ESC or press <ENTER> on an empty line it will deselect all
             items
            -if you had a selection already and you would like to add single items
             one by one, just hold down CTRL key while you left-click on the desired
             fields

    2)just simply use left click combined with Shift and/or CTRL for manual
      mouse driven selections
      Pressing right button of mouse will not only select but also draw item on
      selected layer

    3)if you have pressed <ENTER> on an empty phrase you first of all will deselect
      anything which was selected  and you can then enter the so-called "assembly
      mode" by left clicking on an item and afterwards pressing space as often as
      desired, while the select parts dialog is active. The selection will move
      down the list one by one displaying the selected part in the window
      automatically (with the corresponding layer being active).

     Alternatively 1:
     If you had more than one item selected and you did not clear the selections list
     by <ENTER> on an empty phrase, only the first item will be taken into account
     and all others will be deselected.

     Alternatively 2:
     You can of course also select an item by clicking on it, pressing space will
     then proceed as described

     This mode also features arrows Up/Down selection, where arrow Up will reverse
     the action of arrow Down/Spacebar. Furthermore, holding SHIFT while pressing
     arrow Up/Down will increase the selection in either direction
    -------------------------
    More Features:

    4)Inversion of selection:
      pressing this button at any given time inverts the selection concerning the
      whole list and upon clicking Mark button this new selection will be drawn
      onto screen.

    5)Top/bottom selection
      General:  press mark to mark selections on screen, after choosing to select
                       top or bottom parts.

        a)in existing selection will only remove non wanted items
              (e.g. all bottom parts if you press "top  parts") from selection

        b)if there is no selection, all top or all bottoms parts are selected

    6)Choose available layers for marking selected parts from drop-down list
      HINT: if pick and place file is loaded last, already occupied layers
            will not be in the drop-down list

    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hint 1:
    right click functionality to know Part description.
    After you have graphically marked a number of parts (say all resistors) you can
    right click onto a part which is selected in the scroll-down list of available
    parts in the search dialog.
    Its designator, comment and footprint are then shown in the statusbar and in the log window.
    This comes in handy if there are many parts you want to look at, but e.g. you already
    know a fault has occurred only on one side of the board.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hint 2:
    SCROLLING (in the dialog window)
     Scrolling generally only occurs, if search for comments is not activated AND
     also whenever enter is hit the list will bescrolled to the first hit,
     regardless of the search mode.
     The use of BackSpace is supported.
     If you decide to select an entry from the list of completions offered, then the
     scrolling will only occur once you press enter.

    Example:
     imagine you are looking for an element labelled EU3:
     If you hit the first key (E) to enter a search phrase in the entry field, the
     list will be scrolled to the first element matching this key (E), also entering
     a subsequent key (U) will then further refine that and scroll to the first
     element with EU etc.
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