Apologies as this seems like a common query, but I can’t seem to get to the bottom of it.
I have a circuit and am performing DRC on it, and am getting issues because of connecting power pins and bidirectional pins.
ErrType(4): Conflict problem between pins. Severity: warning
@ (245.11 mm,113.03 mm): Pin 1 (Bidirectional) of component K2 is connected to
@ (190.50 mm,57.15 mm): pin 4 (Power output) of component V1 (net 40).
As the DRC says, Pin 4 of the regulator V1 is supplying 12V of power to the net, and I’m using that to drive a relay coil on K2. The two coil pins are marked as “bidirectional”, and this is giving rise to the ErrType(4).
Should I not be connecting power to a bidir port?
Also, notice that only that one copy is being flagged as an error, the other relays visible there (K4, K5) are setup the same, but don’t show a DRC error.
A bidirectional pin in output mode could short out your power supply. (Example: if you connect such a pin directly to the positive supply and then the pin tries to output low.)
Only power supplies should have power output. Bidirectional is reserved for pins that can be either input pins or output pins in push pull mode
Aah, I was led astray by the fact that they can be connected either way around, indiscriminately - but I guess that means they should be marked as “passive” and not input or output?
KiCad filters identical errors on the same net out so you only get one notification error instead of a notification error on every pin on the net. So, because the same error was on the same net on all the relays, KiCad only told you about the one. I don’t think this can be changed in the settings. If this is a concern for you, you can submit a bug report for the devs to consider as a whishlist item.
@SembazuruCDE that’s fine, I was just curious - making sure it wasn’t something weird I’d done to that particular instance of the symbol. Thanks for clarifying.
