You only have one schematic file in your project. That does not work.
The “Replicate Layout” plugin is dependent on having a Hierarchical schematic. Then you place all the footprints of one of the instances of a schematic file, and the Replicate Layout plugin, then replicates the layout for the other sheets.
Have another look at the project I made, and then study it for as long as needed to understand it.
In the root schematic, I just have some mounting holes, and 6 sheets:
The schematic symbols for all the parts (only resistors and LED’s in this case) is of course the same, because it is the same schematic, but depending on what sheet you look at, the RefDes assignments are different. Note that the first screenshot has resistors 1 through 8, and the second screenshot below has resistors 9 through 16.
I have experimented a bit with adding another layer of hierarchy. The Idea was to have a main level with 6 sheets for columns, a second level with 8 sheets of rows, and then on the third level just a single resistor with 3 LEDs. When I did that however, I got into some trouble with the replicate layout plugin and the convoluted brainwaves under my scalp. So I took the easy way out and just copied the resistor with the string of LED’s a few times in the schematic. In hindsight that also seemed the proper way, because else I had too many “reference” parts to place for the replicate plugin to work.
But the important thing is you have to use the hierarchical sheets for the replicate layout plugin. Without a hierarchical schematic it simply does not work.
@MitjaN I did an experiment with the project in this thread. I first created a root sheet with 6 “column” hierarchical sheets, and in the column hierarchical sheet I created 8 “row” hierarchical sheets. The Idea was to only draw a single resistor and 3 LED’s, and then let the Replicate Layout plugin do the rest, but it did not seem to work. I’m guessing the Replicate Layout does not support nesting in this way.
Because it did not work, I eventually changed it to a schematic sheet with 8 resistors and 24 LED’s (easy copy & paste) and only used the Replicate Layout plugin for a single “replicate level”.
A few questions:
Is this supposed to work?
Is it useful enough to pursue at all? (It will mostly be for schematics with lots of repetition, you need a lot of “reference” components, and simply using array functions may be a better approach to similar problems).
It could also be related to this:
Apparently there is a bug where the Replicate Layout plugin does not work correctly with empty schematics.
Thanks for the notice. It looks like at least one of my plugins (Replicate Layout) has issues with hierarchical schematics where some middle/bottom layer does not have any footprints. It is quite likely that Place Footprints plugin also has the same issues.
Though I have somewhere in the back of my mind that I already covered this case sometime in the past. It might have been V5 compatible plugin.
Anyhow, I’ll try to get on it, but it’ll take a while before I start. If anybody manages to prepare a test project and open an issue on GitHub attaching _error.log file, I’d really appreciate it.
And finally answers to you questions:
Yes it should work.
Yes, if for no other reason than to stroke my ego. Replicate Layout has two features which were implemented mostly as I find them challenging. First one is possibility to replicate hierarchical sheet which also contains already replicated hierarchical sheets (Altium speak “room containing more rooms”). Second one is the posibility to replicate on flip side where the source layout is.
@Arthur_Khusnutdinov I’ve just looked at your screen shot in post #17. It looks like you are using a (or trying to use) a plugin version intended for use with KiCad V5.1.x and V5.99. With KiCad V6.0.x you should use plugin version which can be installed via KiCad’s PCM (Plugin and content manager)
