I am starting my adventure now learning KiCad. I have a ‘default’ Net class and a VCCGND netclass.
I want to be able to assign NETs in bulk to default or by default when they are created. I seem to only see the option to assign to netclass if I select the NET individually.
How can I do this? This way when using FreeRouting it will pickup on the correct nets.
You can enter patterns with wild cards in Schematic Editor / File / Schematic Setup / Project / Net Classes but this mostly relies on your nets being labeled. You can use a pattern that coincides with the auto generated net names, but that probably does not make much sense.
The other method is by adding net directive labels, but you have to do this for each individual net, and that makes a bit of a mess of the schematic (you can hide these directives). Not too long ago KiCad used to work with another method of putting nets into net classes. That method was more intuitive, but also more limited. This new method is now usable, but not fully developed yet. In KiCad-Nightly there are already some new features of using netclass directives to assign a netclass to multiple nets. See:
Thanks for the info. Since I am not on the Nightly I chose to do the wildcard method and that works…
What do you think is missing from how assignments are currently handled?
I still sometimes miss the simple point and click interface of the old method. One thing missing is an overview of net names that have not been explicitly assigned to a netclass. A workaround is to use netclass coloring in the schematic, by for example making the “Default” net class (temporarily) bright red instead of green makes it stand out in the schematic and does make it relatively easy to see whether you missed some nets.
In such an overview, it would be nice to make a distinction between auto-named nets and labeled nets.
Another thing missing is a column for the netclass name in PCB Editor / Inspect / Net Inspector
I really like these big overviews in spreadsheet format. For the net classes in the shematic setup, maybe such an overview would work if the first row had the patterns, the second row the assigned netclass names, and the columns below that the net names for all the patterns and net classes.
But also, this question is a bit sudden. I was holding off (even thinking about) such details because I can’t run a current nightly at the moment. Once I have my PC fixed and can more easily see what the current state of the nightlies is, it’s easier to work out such ideas and fit them in with what is already available.
You can right click a selected net and choose ‘Assign netclass…’ to do this. Is this the same workflow you’re referring to?
I think having every net assigned to a net class is not a particularly usual usage of the feature. (Not saying it’s wrong - just that most workflows don’t do this). Happy to see evidence to the contrary though. It would be possible to add an ERC check to flag this, but it feels a little use-case specific.
The nightlies (where the net inspector is a dockable panel) have this column.
I’d say your other comments are probably a bit of a mixed-UI paradigm (i.e. mixing definition and assignment) which I’m not completely sold on.