Change annotation and keep PCB up-2-date

Schematic
#1

Today I made some mistakes and I am experiencing a minor inconvenience :sweat_smile:.

Mistake #1
Instead of manually copying the content from one schematic sheet to a different schematic sheet in a different project (which does not copy the annonations, the reason I am doing it like this) I used the option ā€˜insert schematic sheet contentā€™ unfortunately that does retain annonations (I am aware that this is a deliberate feature). And now my relative small board has these huge numbers.

Mistake #2 I did not redo the annonations before I placed the footprints.

afbeelding
afbeelding1090Ɨ572 64.3 KB

I would like to re-annonate this one sheet without losing the net list links to the already placed footprints. These mere 11 components can be done manually, but is there a way to do let KiCad do this for me?

I do have learned that in the future I might as well use the insert schematic sheet content option and than re-annonate that sheet.

Kind regards,

Bas

#2

Select the area of the schematic you want to reannotate. Tools > Annotate Schematic and enable Selected, Reset Annotations and enter the start number you want. However the numbers may need manual tweaking if they donā€™t quite suit. 11 isnā€™t too many to do manually.

Update PCB from Schematic and the annotations should propagate to the PCB with the default matching by unique ID.

Edit: The selection is a powerful general feature. Besides the operations available from the context menu (right click), check other operations to see if they support Selection as the operand.

#3

It was default behavior in V5.
I have little experience with V6 but whenever I update pcb from schematic the default is to use references and not unique ID. To use ID I have to uncheck one checkbox.

#4

Maybe I set it to match by uuid and it stuck. But itā€™s always been this way for me so maybe it got migrated from v5 settings.

#5

For the future - there is also ā€œpaste specialā€ which will allow you to keep or reset annotation of the symbols

#6

There is also a tool named Geographical Reannotate in the layout editor which can be used together with Update Schematic from PCB for exactly this purpose. Both can be found under Tools.