Perhaps I should have started a new topic, but since you have already downloaded the design I though maybe here would be better.
If you wouldn’t mind, I found a troublesome reaction to a component change then unchange on that same board.
My sequence is:
eeschema: reverse the polarity of D7 (by rotate + rotate)
Pcbnew: Update PCB from schematic
Pcbnew: reverse the orientation of D7 (by rotate + rotate)
eeschema: realize the diode was originally correct so we rotate D7 back to its original position.
Pcbnew: Update PCB from schematic
Pcbnew: reverse the orientation of D7 (by rotate + rotate)
Now I should be back to where I started but in Pcbnew there are two ratsnest lines on a connected net. The only way I could get rid of them is to select the net ( using “I” ) press E then OK…
I am using my own power symbol however I tried again with a built in power symbol with the same result.
Now for a simple board like this, its not much of an issue. However if I were rotating an IC with many pins things might get dicey.
Running DRC might have also fixed your problem. (Your changes in eeschema coupled with changes on the pcb side meant that the connectivity information got out of date. Running DRC should rebuild it.)
I ran DRC and it did not fix it. Oddly enough it did not find unconnected nets but it did flag every pad on the affected net as “trace too close to pad” which in this case the trace was on the pad.
I seems like the net name derived from the power (flag?) was overridden by what would be the net name if the net had not been named.
When importing a changes to the connectivity from eeschema you will get some tracks connected to new nets. (you would already get an DRC error at this point.)
I assumed this would be fixed by running DRC after rotating your diode but it seems not to be the case. (I seem to remember DRC did such things in v4 but i could be wrong here.) Maybe report this as a strange behavior over at launchpad.
Now I’m a bit curious about how you got the net 24Vac onto the tracks in the first place. Did you assign that in pcbnew or did it come in automatically from the import?
edit Regardless of the method, you can fix the issue by changing (in Libedit) your 24Vac symbol from a Power Output to Power Input.
You may have accidentally changed it from Power Input to Power Output. The library version (current) has +6V as a Power Input. Together with the hidden flag, this causes it to make a global label.
This non-intuitive behavior will become explicit in v6.
Perhaps I’m not using the power symbol correctly. I don’t care about spice. Here I used a simple (in my mind) global with the benefit that the reader will know it is a power source. Here DRC gives an error for the right hand +5V. Connected to other pins but not driven by…
Should I just use a global label? It would work but it wouldn’t be nearly as intuitive.
@Sprig as explained to you in your original post: Nothing of importance changed in ERC (Yes error messages got cleaned up but that does not change the behavior.)
Please do not confuse new users with things if you yourself do not fully understand the subject matter.
Yes the power flag is not intuitive. Mostly because the powerflag is just another symbol instead of being a special thing like the “this pin is left unconnected on purpose” flag.
But having this check at all adds a lot to kicads power. eagle for example has no way to check if a IC is powered. This means one thing more that the user needs to check manually. (Eagle has a electrical type of power input but lacks the one of power output. Meaning it can not be able to check for this.)
The other thing that threw me (off the correct path) was that every voltage flag in the “power.lib” is described as a Power Flag. Unfortunate description.
I hope my issue was able to help others. As I said before I love Kicad. I’ve only been using it for a few months and I’ve just received my 3rd board. All 3 are pretty simple but useful. Its gotten so hand built prototypes (or in my case final usable device) is a thing of the past.
