Feedback on small schematic project

Same here. I have been looking a bit at two pages of power regulators, and I can’t figure out which are the inputs and the outputs. Apparently there is a battery too somewhere in there. I have always had a big dislike of the many unconnected puzzle boxes.

This is a relatively big / complex schematic, There are much bigger schematics of course but this is getting there. I find that with A4 sheets, you have to cut circuits into too small pieces and it often becomes illegible.

You can’t dump everything on a big sheet and connect it either. You have to find some balance. Putting all power related stuff on a single A3 sheet is a good idea. Combine it with (roughly) signal flow from left to right, and Voltages from top to bottom. And put emphasis on important parts. If the battery is the main power supply for the circuit, then show it as a big battery in the circuit itself, and put all derived voltages from the battery on the right side of it. If there is a battery charger circuit (with input connectors?) then put that on the left side of the battery.

Similar for microcontrollers. It often is the main part of the functionality of a circuit. Put it central on the page, Try to put sensors on the left side, and outputs on the right side. Try to connect most of the things directly to the microcontroller with wires, but labels are OK too. But make a conscious decision of what makes the most sense in each instance.

There are some open wire ends. Always scan your schematic for the small green open squares:


Jut today an ERC test has been added to KiCad-nightly:

You also do not have to make this construction:

In KiCad local and global labels always connect to each other if they are on the same page. So you can use local labels on the same page, and if you want some of those labels to go global, just put a global label with the same name on that page.

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