Can't connect to ground fill

[roboya]

Hello!

I haven’t used Kicad for a while, and I have the following problem.

In the schematic, I have set up a power jack. Two pins are connected to ground.

I have defined a filled area called GND. But as there is no link in the PCB, I thought

that there might ba an exclusion zone which prevents the thermal pad to be linked to

the filled area, so I switched to plan B: I have used explicite tracks and vias.

The problem is that pin 2 (ground) is actually connected to ground, but pin 3 which should

be also ground, is not connected to the filled plane.

So, here are the questions:

1. Why is pin 2 not connected to the ground plane in the first place (with thermal spokes)?
2. Why isn’t pin 3 connected (pin 2 is labeled 2 GND, pin 3 is labeled pin 3 only, no GND label.

I don’t think I changed the method. The upper plane (red) is configured as GND, as can be shown

in the next-next picture. You can check that F.cu is conigured to GND for all the filled parts.

Any hints?

Thanks

//————————————————————–

Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 9.0.5-9.0.5~ubuntu24.04.1, release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.4
FreeType 2.13.2
HarfBuzz 8.3.0
FontConfig 2.15.0
libcurl/8.5.0 OpenSSL/3.0.13 zlib/1.3 brotli/1.1.0 zstd/1.5.5 libidn2/2.3.7 libpsl/0.21.2 (+libidn2/2.3.7) libssh/0.10.6/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.59.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.6.7

Platform: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, ubuntu, wayland
OpenGL: Intel, Mesa Intel(R) Graphics (RPL-S), 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 25.0.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.2

Build Info:
Date: Oct 2 2025 13:35:52
wxWidgets: 3.2.4 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.83.0
OCC: 7.6.3
Curl: 8.5.0
ngspice: 42
Compiler: GCC 13.3.0 with C++ ABI 1018
KICAD_IPC_API=ON

Locale:
Lang: en_GB
Enc: UTF-8
Num: 1,234.5
Encoded кΩ丈: D0BACEA9E4B888 (sys), D0BACEA9E4B888 (utf8)

[paulvdh]

This is where you made the mistake:

The Zone name is just a name. It does nothing special and you can even leave it empty. You have to select GND Net. That is what defines to which net the zone is connected.

[Piotr]

In my opinion the second source of problem is that you don’t have pin 3 at schematic, but you have pin 3 in footprint.

[roboya]

Hello!

Thanks for your reply.

Now please explain me this:

The 2 grounded pins are defined the same way, they are actually connected in the schematic file.

When I try to move with the ground symbol with the G command, the wires move with it, so both

pins are connected the same way. Why isn’t pin 3 connected?

Thanks for any hint!

[paulvdh]

@roboya

The 2 grounded pins are defined the same way, they are actually connected in the schematic file.

Pin 3 has no net name, and thus it’s not connected to the same net in the schematic.
In this screenshot you made:

The other pin has pin number “MP”, and not pin number “3” (In KiCad pin “numbers” can have letters too, they’re just strings). In KiCad pin numbers have to match exactly. Some other programs use methods of pin remapping between symbols and footprints, but KiCad does not do this.

[roboya]

Hello!

Thanks, that’s was it. I replaced the symbol with pins labeled 1, 2, 3 and now they are all connected.

Thanks again!