I’ve been working with PcbNew mostly lately, so if this has been a feature for a while, I missed it; and I may have missed it because now the schematic just looks normal to me.
This shows that they can be shown if a user wants to see them:
I am using a 5.1.2 nightly at the moment, don’t remember the date. If this feature populates into the next Stable I will offer to make available to the developer who made the change the offer of an adult beverage package worth up to $20 US; under the condition that doing so violates no laws. If this offer is not taken up by whomever made the change, I will make a $20 contribution to the KiCad development VIA Cern.
Wow! Just WOW! My printed schematics are going to be so happy now!
And how does a line look like if it just crosses an other one? No dot? No “bridgy” thingy?
I prefer the connection dot, because it is a property of exactly the two participating signals at exactly that place.
The bridge is a non-property at any given location.
The dots are certainly needed to confirm a connection for me (I am not disciplined enough to never make connections at a cross, besides they also confirm direct connections symbol to symbol), however it is nice to be able to adjust the size of the junction dot. I thought the default at 40 mils looked at bit on the large side in my system so going down to 35 mils was an improvement for me.
Being able to make dots smaller than the wires so you can not see them is a step backwards for KiCad.
The junction dots are an important part of the schematic because they define whether 2 wires are connected or not, and being able to hide them by making them smaller then the wire thickness will probably confuse a lot of people (Including me, If I would see such a schematic made by someone else).
I would much prefer an enforced junction dot size of around twice the wire thickness of the wire it’s connected too.
Unambiguity and clarity across Schematics is far more important to me than … (I do not understand why anyone would want to obfuscate schematics b hiding juncion dots).
Why being able to do something which wasn’t possible earlier is a step backwards? You just can choose not to do it. And it hardly happens by accident. Although I personally would prefer double confidence: using dots and avoiding “+” junctions.
If someone posts a schematic with some question here on the forum I do not know what their settings are and if they’ve hidden the dots, or forgotten to draw them at all.
Combine that with beginners posting sloppy schematics (with for example text printed over wires or components) and it gets really confusing.
Same with opensource project you find on gitlab or elsewhere.
It’s just another entry point for confusion with no real benefit.
Having an option in software is never a bad thing. You don’t see the point in having dots being invisible, me neither but others do. For some it’s a company policy so they don’t have a choice and it was a dealbreaker to use KiCad.
Argument that their screenshots of schematics are confusing doesn’t really hold water, you can ask them to share .sch file instead of screenshot or ask a clarification, same way if they had a hand drawn schematic on a piece of paper.
I certainly think it is a step forward for KiCad. Anyone can check my profile to get an idea of my field of experience with schematics that do not have junction dots. It is a significant industry that KiCad should not exclude over such a simple concept.
While I myself certainly am very grateful to get rid of the little green boogers on my schematics, it seems that this is a step forward for KiCad to be accessible to industries with this requirement.
No, I do not know, because I do not know your rulebook.
Hiding the dots simply makes schematics harder to read and increases the possibility of errors. For example, in this sreenshot the capacitor is not connected to AREF:
which only becomes clear when you zoom in:
I cincerely hope you only put the “no connect” flags on your crossings to try to make some point clear. If you simply put junction dots on connections there would not have been room for ambiguity, becasue crossings without dots would always be unconnected. ( drawing inductors to “jump over” connections is still more horrible)
What if you drew the horizontal connecteion bettween “C?” and “C509” a bit higher, so its at the same height as the Trigger pin of the 555? Then you’d have to place a junction dot to make clear there is a connection.
Placements of a value over text of another component is unnecessary clutter.
So is making the T-split to the 2nd capacitor above the horizontal track to the trigger pin of the 555.
I also see you make the “invisible” attributes visible. I thought that feature was lost somewmere in KiCad V4, but you inspired me to look it up in the manual and it is (luckily) still there, Sreenshot from section 2.9 of the eeschemal user manual:
Some time ago I was serching for it in the menu’s but could not find it. Apparently it’s only on the left toolbar.
The junction dots are also small and add very minimal “clutter” to a schematic.
There is no ambiguity in a screenshot like below.
There is no need to explain my “rules” for how the connections are made.
Junction dots seem to be a topic that generates religious fervour. Personally I will always use them, but if you don’t want to, fine.
Closing the thread before it gets more heated
