A bit fuzzy on hierarchical sheets

So I have a fair number of schematics drawn for various components out of an old FSI Saturn processor…

I’d like to make a hierarchical sheet to see how all the parts work together.

I can see how to add sheets to a root sheet, but what then?

Do the sub sheets become part of the hierarchical sheet or can they be opened separately?

I also have the possibility that I may want a second hierarchical sheet within the main one (for the process controller).

Just having a bit of difficulty trying to find that ‘aha!’ moment…

Have you read the docs on hierarchical schematics?

I’ll read through it again, but I’m still on 7.0.10 and documents seem to have been updated to 8.x already.

There’s a 7.0 version of the docs you can access from the version dropdown near the top right:

but I don’t think there have been major changes in this area.

Each sheet “placeholder” has a filename, and it refers to an actual schematic. Multiple sheet placeholders can refer to the same schematic file. If you change that file, all references have this new info. Behind the screens KiCad has to work some magic. For example, it results in one schematic file, but with multiple reference designators for each of the instances.

I got the root and upper-level assembly sheets made up and it is actually neat to be able to move up and down through the levels.

My next step, though, is to harmonize the labels across all 30+ sheets…

I’m not sure you need to do that. You’re probably contemplating global labels for this.
IMO, it’s much better to use the hierachical labels instead.

What you need to know, is that the hierachical labels need to be defined inside each sheet first. As soon as that’s done, you move up one level and select the tool “Import sheet pin”. That will let you place the labels on the circumference of the sub-sheet. A lot like adding pins to a symbol.
After that, you can route wires between sheets just like between symbols.

Like this:

AVS-2024-10-29_232615.zip (55.8 KB)

Also, if you want to stay on 7.0, upgrade to 7.0.11, which is very reliable.

I had three different formats for the output naming and four for the monitor lines, so I did need to do a bit of cleanup anyway.

A word of advice: Don’t let the appellation sheet make you think a sheet has to contain a lot of circuitry. I have sheets that are no more that a couple of ICs plus their decoupling capacitors.

Oh, and if you find that the contents of a sheet look tiny in the frame, reduce the paper size of the sheet in Page Setup. I use A5 for many of my sheets. The PDF viewer or printer will scale it up on output.

Right now, I have 1 schematic per board, and the four hierarchical sheets I threw together are set up so I can better visualize how that board fits into the whole. Your comment does give me a glimmer of an idea in the back of my head - there are two boards that would probably be better broken up into stages, but I need to get some hands-on time with this feature to better understand it.

The bit about harmonizing the labels turned out to be worthwhile, as I ended up finding and correcting a number of errors along the way.