IPN suggestion

[electronics4fun]

Hello Everyone,
This is the next feature that we want to implement and is referring to discussion #1041 and pull request #1051.

This, again, is the electronic development standpoint for more clarification.

Let's start.

Imaging you have a lot of parts in your database. A lot of parts are very similar because you want to use them as alternative parts (or "Part choice") in your "Projects" or "Assemblies.

For more transparency with our parts we use a naming system.
For "Name" the MPN is used, but characters that represent packaging information and others is truncated.
The "Description" is a very short and standardized description how it is also used by DigiKey.
This looks like this.

The Feature

For all productive used parts on PCBs we use IPNs (Internal Part Numbers).
In our case something like AAAA-BBBB (see image).
AAAA is a category number (it is actually more than that but i will not bother you with the rest) and BBBB is a up counted number for each new part.
For a new part is is handy if the number is suggested by the system like in the image.
Otherwise you have to look up manually what valid number is next.

The feature looks up the category number (prefix) from the settings of the specific category.

When the same existing description is entered for a part: an automated search for a free IPN with the appropriate increment is conducted, and suggestions are provided in the list.
Configuration is possible both at the category level (assigning IPN prefix) and at the part level (for selected part categories or manually modified part descriptions).
Number of digits for category-specific part increment are configurable.

So please let us know if you are interested in this feature and what you think about it.