Directory/name.kicad_sch as sheetnames

Schematic
1

Hello,

I’m trying to open an old design with an up to date KiCAD 8.0. In this design, I have put hierarchical sheets in several project subdirectories. Main sheeet ca nbe opened by eeschema, but it prints error:
“unable to open (subsheet name) for reading”. And of course, only main sheet is readable.

When I go into these subdirectories, I have a lot .sch and .kicad_sch. I suppose all data are present. But how can I open this old design ?

Best regards,

JB

2

Normally both the root sheet and all the sub sheets are in the same directory, but sheets can also be in another directory, but KiCad does not search or guess for filenames, and you have to add the correct path name to your sub sheets.

the *.sch files are from an old KiCad version (probably V5 or older). KiCad does not delete these files after they have been saved in the newer *.kicad_sch format. I recommend you make a backup of the whole project, inclusive these old files, and then delete the old schematic files.

3

Problem : project contains path for all sheets…

4

I’ve never got into this situation, but can you still see the subsheet boxes on the main sheet? If so, highlight the box by clicking on the border, and select properties, then edit the file path. Fingers crossed for you.

If you get really desperate you could edit the .kicad_pcb file, looking for occurences of the sheetfile property. Make a backup first, of course.

5

Why do you want to keep that directory structure? It’s not like there are a gazillion files in a KiCad project that need further division into sub directories, and it makes organizing them harder as you have noticed. If you want to put them into a sub directory, then you probably also want to use the ${KIPRJMOD} environment variable, to instruct KiCad to use a relative path starting from the project directory.

6

I think I have found a bug somewhere in a file conversion routine…

Please note that sheetfile and sheetname have been swaped !

kicad
kicad1029×429 51.4 KB

7

Interesting that the Hierarchical path field at the bottom suggests that it’s a display issue rather than a data issue. What exact version are you running? If an early 8.0.0 or something like that you should upgrade as bugs may have been fixed.

8

Nope. It’s really a data issue. I have to delete all broken sheet and I have to create again these sheets and to redo all connections. I don’t know how I will reassign label to synchronize PCB.

It’s a recent KiCAD built from sources:

Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64
Version: 8.0.7-59-ged5068829f, release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.2.6
    FreeType 2.13.3
    HarfBuzz 10.1.0
    FontConfig 2.15.0
    libcurl/8.11.0 GnuTLS/3.8.8 zlib/1.3.1 brotli/1.1.0 zstd/1.5.6 libidn2/2.3.7 libpsl/0.21.2 libssh2/1.11.1 nghttp2/1.64.0 ngtcp2/1.9.1 nghttp3/1.6.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.5.18
Platform: Devuan GNU/Linux 6 (excalibur/ceres), 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, , x11
OpenGL: AMD, AMD Radeon RX 570 Series (radeonsi, polaris10, LLVM 19.1.4, DRM 3.59, 6.11.10-amd64), 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.2.8-1
Build Info:
    Date: Dec 16 2024 10:45:53
    wxWidgets: 3.2.6 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
    Boost: 1.74.0
    OCC: 7.8.1
    Curl: 8.11.0
    ngspice: 42
    Compiler: GCC 14.2.0 with C++ ABI 1019
9

You should save one the old pre-conversion projects to report the bug.

10

Sure, but I don’t know where this bug has occurred. It’s a very old project. And I haven’t seen it on others projects.

11

There is also a bug if you have subsheets of subsheets in subfolders. That’s something I noticed a while ago

12

I have subsheets of subsheets in subfolders…