Hierarchical Sheets! Hierarchical PCB layouts?

I’ve just started using hierarchical sheets to encapsulate frequently-used parts of my designs. It’s cool because I can just copy the “power supply” sheet into another project, and I’ve got the whole switching-regulator with supporting parts ready to go. Sweet.

But then I have to re-do the PCB layout.

Is there a way to also import the PCB layout that corresponds to a hierarchical sheet? (I’m guessing not b/c of the very decoupled nature of layout and schematic capture.)

But think about how handy it would be, and how many times you re-use groups of circuit elements. Microcontroller + decoupling caps + crystal + in-system programming headers. Power supply chunks. All sorts of logically-related circuit element groups are out there.

There’s no need to re-do this layout every time, right? And cut-paste from another PCB design just feels amateurish after doing the equivalent in the schematic side of things so easily.

Anyone have a good solution? Where do you keep your commonly-used snippets in Kicad?

1 Like

Hi Elliot!

Sorry, no solution for this one, but I second your idea!