I’m getting back to hobbyist electronics after many years with little time to work on anything. I’m currently trying to design my first circuit board with KiCad, but I’m getting an error in the Electrical Rule Checker and I don’t understand why.
In the attached file I’ve got two 75HC595 chips they are connected to a common +5v and GND power lines. The ERC is telling me that one of these chips has an error because the “Input Power pin not driven by any Power Output pins”. The other 75HC595 is perfectly happy. I can not understand why only one chip would be effected. If there was a problem with the power lines surely both chips would be effected.
In addition, do not call your IC’s “port[n]”. Reference Designators (a.k.a RefDes) have standardized letters. See for example the list on: Reference designator - Wikipedia And KiCad also uses these letters by default: R for resistor C for capacitor J for connector U for Integrated circuits
etc…
Such standardized and short names are preferred because they are used in lots of different ways. For example, they appear on the BOM and KiCad shows them in net names (for the auto generated nets) both on tracks and pads.
If you use these standardized names, it is easier for others to work with your schematic (PCB assembly etc), and if you are used to these letters, then it’s easier for you to read schematis made by others. Standardization is good.
Thank you everybody - I had wrongly assumed that it was power for the single chip that was at fault and had spent about an hour double and triple checking it against another chip’s power connection that I (wrongly) assumed was correct. It makes sense that KiCad would only flag the error once as I would have drowned under error messages that were all prompting me to make a single fix.
paulvdh, thanks for the heads up WRT the naming conventions. I think that had probably saved me from my next big mistake!
