Generate Placement Rule Areas with hierarchical sheets

I have only recently started to use the replicate feature so I might be doing something wrong. But I have noticed that if you try to automatically generate a placement rule area in a hierarchical sheet that contains other hierarchical sheets, the generate area contains only the components of the parent hierarchical sheet without including the components of the internal hierarchical sheets. I don’t know if this is done by design but it is not my expected behaviour. I would expect the created placement area contains all of the components of the hierarchical sheet and sub-hierarchical sheets, otherwise replicating layout in this context doesn’t make any sense.

Another little thing I have noticed is that when you automatically create a placement rule area, if you then click ctrl+z to undo, it doesn’t get rid of it. You have to delete manually.

First, you didn’t tell the exact KiCad version, and in this case it’s especially important. Use the latest bugfix release.

I’m using the latest release 9.0.2.

Also I was having a play with this and the same thing happens with component classes. When enclosing a set of components within a rule area in the schematics, if you then try to automatically generate a placement rule area it won’t include any component in hierarchical sheets.

This was fixed for 9.0.2: Multi-channel recursive hierarchical sheet footprints not working (#20339) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab

If you’re seeing incorrect behaviour, please file a bug report with exact replication steps, and an example project and we’ll take a look.

For the component class case, this was by design. There have been a handful of people who have commented it would be good for them to be inherited; I could see the utility of a property on hierarchical sheets to enable this (something like ‘Inherit component classes’) - but I haven’t thought through how difficult it would be to implement yet.

… you could also try with the 9.0.3 release candidate which is hot off the press! But if you do, use a copy of your project in case of any critical bugs.