I am reverse engineering an existing two layer PCB and hoping to get a representation that mirrors the original. I have scanned both sides of the board and placed those images onto the front and back layers and am happily tracing tracks, joining components etc.
Those bodge wires are usually a result of the engineer making some mistake or forgetting some detail during the design phase, with the result that those mods are deemed necessary after the (first batch) of PCB’s have been etched. If you are re-doing the PCB, there is no need to implement the bodge wires themselves. Just draw them as regular tracks on the PCB. But that will mess up the routing a bit around the bodge wires. I would first route the etched tracks, and then either modify them later to squeeze in the tracks for the bodge wires, or just ad some bodge wires too. A few of those wires is not much trouble if it is only for a few PCB’s, and adding them as bodge wires yourself may make troubleshooting a bit easier.
But if you want to represent them on the PCB in some manner, then you can set KiCad to a 4 layer PCB, and use one of the inner layers to draw the bodge wires.
For PCB:
• Place two Pad’s (one for each end of wire) and draw it on Silk Layer
• Not needed but, can make a Footprint the same way and include a 3D-STEP (or WRL) for realistic graphic.
Doesn’t need to be a filled rectangle…
For Schematic - just draw what you want in the Schematic…
