There must be something I don’t know or understand.
When I annotate my schematic all the non-capacitive parts become correctly annotated … that is, resistors go from R1 to R17 and so on. But some capacitors remain a “C”, with no numbers but the value gets updated with a sequential number (usually). After annotating, capacitor values look like .01uF7 or 1pF5 and so on. In some areas of my schematic capacitors are labelled correctly.
Whats going on ?
At some point, somebody entered the part’s value into the “Reference” field.
Select the symbol, click “E” (for “Edit Properties”) and correct the information.
Dale
Haha … so simple … You’re the best ! Thanks. It teaches me a lesson; do not to trust data validation.
If this symbol represents a so-called “atomic part”, the oversight may be in the symbol library itself. Check the part in the library to make sure this problem doesn’t haunt you in the future.
Dale
I know i fight a loosing battle but “atomic” is the wrong term in the context of kicad. Atomic implies something inseparable. Especially in computing.
A better term to use is “fully specified”. The symbol specifies everything needed to finish the design already inside the library. It at least points to a footprint. The footprint used is however typically a generic one shared with many other symbols (Standardized packages are quite common. ) In addition such a symbol might also contain BOM information like order numbers, house part number, …
The nearest kicad can get to anything considered atomic is by having both a symbol and footprint specialized to one part number. There are some rare cases where this indeed makes sense. The footprint and symbol are however still separate and the footprint can even be reassigned within the schematic.
I agree. And please don’t count me among the vigorous supporters of “fully specified” (or, “atomic”) parts. But the phrase “atomic parts” seems to be the most popular term for this concept, so . . . . “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”.
Dale
Well; Notwithstanding the issues with “atomic nomenclature” the fault was mine and mine alone. I had used “c_small” generic part and I guess somewhere along the way reversed values and numbering. Then I duplicated my error frequently. I checked; c_small, when called from the library, is fine.
I’m too new to KiCad comment on the validity of using the “atomic” nomenclature. I will say that as a new user I didn’t understand it and I still don’t 
but it didn’t slow me down so far as I know.
Now i’ve used the program for a few months and come to appreciate the merits of the design. This is a fine piece of work.
The term atomic comes from other software packages that have a much closer linking between symbols and footprints. This is why this distinction matters as users might otherwise get the wrong idea of what is possible with kicad. (And as the KiCon talk showed even the devs get confused because this term comes with the idea of closer integration.)
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