I am not into the new digital currency. Perhaps you intended “block and tackle”? 
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if you mark text in other posts, a quote option will appear, this way you can refer to different comments in a single comment of your own…
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The reason this was not an option for @Nanren888 was because they as a new user can not include more than one image per post. Which is a bit of a silly rule in a forum that offers support for a graphical tool.
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You have to missed “Getting Started” page 18:
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@Nanren888 stated that they found the power flag stuff in the getting started tutorial but did not think it was related to their problem.
This is to be expected! New users will miss stuff no matter how well made the tutorial is. Simply because they do not yet know what is or is not important to them.
This is made worse by bad tutorials. If a tutorial for example does in no way explain why something is done in a particular way. Like the use of power flags in the getting started tutorial (or why the symbol pins are getting the pin types they get in the make a symbol section of the same tutorial).
I think i might take a crack at making a real getting started tutorial here on the forum. (Why is everything more exciting than the stuff i should really work on?) If it works well then we can ask the devs if they could include it as the getting started tutorial for newbies to eCAD in general. (The current tutorial is to show users who know other tools how everything is done in KiCad)
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There would definitely be room for “learn eCAD with KiCad” tutorial. I would leave off buses and other nonessential stuff which are now in the Getting Started, and add something else instead.
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I would not necessarily replace stuff i leave out with something else. I would say a true getting started tutorial should be very short and really only deal with the absolute basics.
Such a tutorial can however be filled with links to other more detailed descriptions (this is the benefit of written tutorials over video tutorials. In a video tutorial everyone needs to follow the same order of learning stuff while a written one can be read in any order and at any speed)
I suspect most of us know the justification for this restriction. I don’t know if it’s possible for the Forum’s Owner or Administrator to relax those restrictions but I will support doing a test run - for, say, 6 months - to measure the negative impact of relaxing, or eliminating, the restrictions.
Dale
I have yet to see a spammer use an image in their post. Most use links plus a bit of text. (And we use links as a suggested workaround for having too few images allowed)
I’ve gone to elevate new users to the next level only to find they’ve already poked around the forum enough to do that on their own. But, yeah, I don’t think images have been much of a problem. The biggest ‘gotcha’ from an automatic forum block is ‘new user typed too fast’. I’m not sure what the metrics used are as some legit first timers get caught by that one.
I have been asked to provide a simple route. So this would be my way:
Add numbers to the devices (V1, R1, R2 etc.)
Add a voltage value to the source.
Add global labels (e.g. in, out)
Start the simulator.
Watch the results.
No Rule Check. <======
Best start with a resistive voltage divider, where you immediately know what the output should be. Start a dc simulation by placing a text box with dc v1 0 1 0.1 to your circuit diagram.
If this is o.k., have a look at http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/ngspice-eeschema.html (and perhaps also at http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/ngspice-tutorial.html) for some more advanced circuits.
If this first step has not been o.k., post your questions here.
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Why global labels? We discovered global labels generate unnecessary ERC warnings. Do local labels not work?
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In this thread I had from the beginning a problem that I felt I’m not sure of all nuances of what @Nanren888 is writing (some more difficult for me English than usual).
So I started from writing that I’m not sure of that sentence meaning, but then I have read it 3…4 times and assumed that it clearly (I hope) says he had never seen anything like “PWR_FLAG” so I’ve deleted my beginning.
In my opinion if someone who don’t understand electronic is asked to design PCBs then such explanation is needed. But I think such are rare situations (for many years my wife (mathematician) was designing all PCBs in our firm).
In most cases people interested in KiCad just know electronic and at least minimum of programming.
If you try to think a moment that you wont to write the program to design PCBs (with helping the user to avoid mistakes) then it is hard to imagine different solutions then those used in KiCad (I am speaking about basics - such pin types specification, using the same pin numbers in symbols and footprints, and so on). So explaining why the obvious solutions were used seems for me going too low with level.
Relax. No real offense was caused. In fact, I hope you can see that your post has lead to a valuable conversation that looks to produce an easier/more streamlined learning process for thousands of new users to come.
I am glad you invested in seeking out an answer with a sincere heart. Don’t fear upsetting others by asking questions- you can’t control how others may respond. I hope you learn to love KiCad and get to help others, in time, to enjoy it as well. A lot of effort was and is being put into it, and that effort is almost completely driven to create something awesome for everyone to enjoy.
Keep loving to learn and ask boldly but with gratitude.
I wasn’t even sure if the graphical interface was a good place to start instead of some basic command line ngspice to understand it from the ground up to get results.
Most users find command line interfaces way too scary. If one starts with that route then a lot of users will simply give up before they even start.
Maybe. I started with some very simple examples on the command line. Learning something like Kicad first seems like a tougher route. But, to each their own.
People who are younger than me (<30) most likely never saw a command line so it is extremely alien to them. (Even i have been extremely lucky to see the command line before i switched to linux. Nowadays i would argue even linux users can quite happily use their system without ever seeing the command line.)
We really need to admit (to ourselves) that the days of the command line might simply be numbered. Sad as it is future users might no longer be prepared to use that form of interfacing with software.
Which leaves me to believe that it might not be wise to point new (potentially young users) to the command line interface of any software. (At least not at first. After they learned to appreciate the software might be a better point. Because then the sunk cost fallacy helps to retain these users.)
I use them because of the problems with label hierarchy (see Ngspice meas statement)
If KiCad is used as a pure ngspice schematic entry interface, global labels are handled more easily by ngspice. When I enter ‘out’, I will get node name ‘out’, not ‘/out’.
Some responses from me in no particular order:
No to command line. That just scares people off. And KiCAD is primarily GUI anyway.
All v4 tutes on the Internet should be nuked. Or at least labelled with a huge warning. One can dream.
I was lucky to start with v5 tutorials by Peter Dalmaris. I also avoided the pain of migrating from v4 to v5. Ok we’re talking beginners here, which brings me to: All v4 packages on the Internet should be nuked. Dreaming again.
IIRC when I encountered the not driven ERC message I did a web search and found the PWR_FLAG explanation. Now it’s just second nature. I think most tute authors forgot they did this earlier on so don’t give it enough importance.