I am making a Block Diagram from previously drawn schematics and PCB layout files.
I have hierarchical sheets placed on the top level schematic page of my attempt at a Block diagram. Inside each of these hierarchical sheets I have placed a copy of the original schematics, and used the “Paste Special” function to retain the original annotations. This has worked well for me. Inside the first subordinate hierarchical sheet for a given block, I have another hierarchical sheet which is subordinate to the first subordinate sheet. If I use the same technique of copy and Paste Special for the second subordinate sheet the annotations do not retain the original values. All of the annotations on the second subordinate sheet are recomputed and are different from the original copy. Any help in figuring this out would be appreciated. I hope I haven’t been too confusing with my description.
Regards,
Karin
I forgot to enter version number.
I am using KiCad version 7.0.2 release build on
a Win 11 64 bit machine.
Karin
First: Update to at least V7.0.11 Increments in the third number are bug fix updates, and these are made approximately once a month for KiCad. Each month somewhere 40 and 80 (sometimes even more) bugs get fixed. Right after a mayor release (and thus reset of the bug fix increment) there tends to be an increase in the number of small bugs. You can find more detailed info on Release Notes | KiCad EDA
For your hierarchical sheets… Are you inserting multiple identical copies of a sub circuit into your project? If you do this, you use only a small portion of what you can do with hierarchical sheets. The system is built around being able to have multiple instances of the same schematic sheet (file). For example, for an oscilloscope, you design the analog front end once, and then you link to the sheet with the front end as many times as you have channels on your oscilloscope design.
I feel silly for asking, but do you select the right choice during Paste Special? During this operation you get a few choices, and some people may be tempted to click though it without verifying the right choice is (still) selected.
First, it’s very difficult to follow explanation with repeated words and expressions, like “first subordinate sheet…”, “second subordinate sheet…”. The easiest way to make others understand what you mean is to attach is zipped project here.
Second, pay attention to what Paul says about inserting multiple identical copies. If you want to have identical copies, sans reference designators and possibly values, in one design, you shouldn’t copy and paste the symbols and wires etc. I’m not sure what you are doing now, though.
So it’s not just me. I was also getting a bit lost in between the hierarchical sheets, blocks and subordinate thingies.
There was also a bug fixed for Paste Special in KiCad V7.0.10.
- Fix broken symbol reference designators on paste special. #15981
Thank you for the help.
I wound up downloading the current version 8 of KiCad.
The problem I was having seems to be fixed in version 8.
I had inadvertently jumped too far ahead in not realizing that the format of saved files
is different between version 7 and version 8. when I needed some info from the version
7 files I could not import that info in the version 8 files, as I had not saved a version 7
file. Luckily I had another backup file in another directory where I could recover the version
7 files after being overwritten by the version 8 of KiCad. Sorry for the redundancy in words.
All seems to be working for me now.
Karin
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