How to add crossover or hop over at wire junction?

[Goldbug]

@hermit

If I were doing a simple schematic for non-technical people I could see where they would be useful.

That is actually a good point!

[paulvdh]

@hermit

If I were doing a simple schematic for non-technical people I could see where they would be useful.

Nope.
Don’t start teaching bad / non-standard conventions to beginners. That is why (non-)issues like this keep on generating long threads.
Just tell them once that crossing wires do not connect unless there is a dot on it. This simply is the standard that all PCB programs follow.

[hermit]

I’m not talking about teaching people schematics. I’m talking communicating with lay folk. But, to each their own.

[JohnRob]

@hermit

If I were doing a simple schematic for non-technical people I could see where they would be useful.

I don’t agree. A schematic is full of symbols that would be foreign to a non-Technical group. If that group were to really need to understand the schematic they could easily absorb the no cross connections concept. The “T” connections are obvious.

[Paul.Blitz]

The way I see it there’s 2 things here: (1) what the program wants - which we can ignore for the moment; and (2) making the drawing 100% CLEAR to humans, so there are NO doubts what is meant.

Yes, in days of old, I used to use “omegas” for crossovers, and what a PITA they were to draw neatly. A hand-drawn dot is maybe also not neat, but if the rule is “if it’s a blob then it’s a connection” is a pretty safe rule.

And, of course, badly drawn “omega” for a crossover starts to look like a dot / blob - oops!

I remember the changes to the way windows worked, back in 3.1, then 95… annoying changes, but we accept the changes for what they are, like them or not. Kicad wants a dot to be sure there’s a connection, so just accept that, and move on… either move on and use Kicad, or move on to another CAD program.

[eelik]

Add your authoritative opinion here: Poll: should KiCad support hop-over or not?

[Russ]

I don’t care about the hop-over symbols. I won’t use them. However, I do like the ability to have either dots or no-dots for wire junctions. Please keep them as is! Thanks.

[roboya]

Hello!

@Sprig

so long as there are no silly superfluous junction dots.

People who don’t share your opinion are not necessarily silly.
I like the silly dots because I consider them as an acknowledge from the software, like
“I got it, these to wires are connected”. It happened to me in he past that 2 wires were
very close, but not connected. It wasn’t Kicad.
So basically I voted “I don’t care”, i.e. I will not use hop over, but I don’t care if some people
want to use it, that’s their business.
Beside this, I suppose that the same schematic would be displayed with dots in my
configuration, and with hop over in case another person uses them, so what’s the problem?

[jmk]

Hi, @roboya

@Sprigs reference is to the dots being silly, not the people using them.

Personally, I don’t care one way or another about junction dots on three way junctions, however I do use them.
I absolutely abhor four way junctions with dots covering the crime and have never liked or used hop-overs or duck-unders.

[BobZ]

In 5.99, File>Schematic Setup

But the setting seems to do nothing. (I did try F3 - refresh) What am I supposed to do if I want connection dots that are invisibly small or large enough to obliterate the entire schematic?

Application: KiCad Schematic Editor (64-bit)

Version: (5.99.0-12088-gff9612b6da), release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.1.5
libcurl/7.74.0-DEV Schannel zlib/1.2.11

Platform: Windows 10 (build 19043), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW

Build Info:
Date: Aug 26 2021 20:58:53
wxWidgets: 3.1.5 (wchar_t,STL containers)
Boost: 1.76.0
OCC: 7.5.0
Curl: 7.74.0-DEV
ngspice: 34
Compiler: Visual C++ 1928 without C++ ABI

Build settings:
KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON

[paulvdh]

@BobZ

What am I supposed to do if I want connection dots that are invisibly small or large enough to obliterate the entire schematic?

I had to search a bit for that.
It has gotten a bit more complicated in KiCad-nightly V5.99 because the thickness of wires is not a constant. Thickness and and color of connection wires can be coupled with netclasses so you can for example use thicker wires (or a darker shade) for power and GND wires.

So I experimented a bit with the Junction dot size you found.
For me it did not do anything at first either.
Then I placed some new wires and made junction dots, and these new junction dots do change when this new setting is adjusted.

In the screenshot below, there are three new junction dots on the left that respond to the Junction dot size setting. Then a big junction dot I set to “500 mils” manually. Next to that and south of D485 a junction dot I manually set to a size of “0”, which now also scales with the setting above, and then a selected (light blue circle) junction dot, south of D486, and it’s properties show it’s (default) size of “36 mils”. I’m guessing that all junction dots imported from older schematics inherit the fixed junction dot size they had in the old project.

If you want to change existing junction dots then use:
Schematic Editor / Edit / Edit Text and Graphics Properties.

With this you can set all junction dots (Or use the filters in the upper right corner) either to some fixed value, or set them to “auto” by setting their size to “0”.

Setting all junction dots to “6000 mils” pretty much obliterates the schematic:

You can set them bigger, but if I go over “12000 mils” then they cover the border on all sides of the paper and you loose any reference of scale.

[jmk]

Hi Bob,

I just tried: Setup/ General/ Formatting/ Junction dot size and up came six preset sizes from “none” to “largest” when you place a new junction dot anywhere.

Do you not have this?

Using:
Application: KiCad

Version: 5.99.0-unknown-5975524826~131~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.4
libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Linux 5.4.0-86-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, cinnamon, x11

Build Info:
Date: Sep 23 2021 04:13:31
wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.3.0
Curl: 7.68.0
ngspice: 31
Compiler: GCC 9.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON

[Sprig]

@roboya

I like the silly dots because I consider them as an acknowledge from the software, like
“I got it, these to wires are connected”. It happened to me in he past that 2 wires were
very close, but not connected. It wasn’t Kicad.

Well, I’ve been a bit more brief this time around the topic. I agree that there should be an “unconnected End Indicator Size Option” in the preferences for the EDA display options. But, this is a seperate issue from Junction Dots being printed on a paper schematic.

[BobZ]

@jmk

I just tried: Setup/ General/ Formatting/ Junction dot size and up came six preset sizes from “none” to “largest” when you place a new junction dot anywhere.

Do you not have this?

Yes I have this…but simply changing the setting has no immediate effect upon the junction dots which are already in the schematic. Also…my version is from August but the “Edit Text & Graphic Properties” Dialog Box does not include anything for Junction Size.

I am able to reverse click on a junction dot and obliterate the schematic as Paulvdh says. The performance essential is there!!!

[jmk]

@BobZ

but simply changing the setting has no immediate effect upon the junction dots which are already in the schematic

Same here.

@BobZ

my version is from August but the “Edit Text & Graphic Properties” Dialog Box does not include anything for Junction Size.

You need to “get with it” and stop being an old fossil, as my grand kids would say.

Nothing quite like a schematic with big purple dots everywhere!

[davidsrsb]

@roboya

I like the silly dots because I consider them as an acknowledge from the software, like
“I got it, these to wires are connected”. It happened to me in he past that 2 wires were
very close, but not connected. It wasn’t Kicad.

A common problem for new user who make the mistake of changing to a fine schematic grid.
With four wire junctions, you never are sure that one of them is not really connected, which is why I avoid them

[jmk]

Hi @BobZ

@jmk

@BobZ

but simply changing the setting has no immediate effect upon the junction dots which are already in the schematic

Same here.

I take my comment back.

I’ve found changing the junction size by “schematic setup” changes the size of all the dots of the file I have been working on with 5.99 instantly, but doesn’t change the dots on the same page that were imported from 5.1.10

I’ll download the current 5.99 tonight and do some more experimenting tomorrow. Something doesn’t seem right.

[mgyger]

Symbols for manual use (at your own risk):

EESchema-LIBRARY Version 2.4
#encoding utf-8

#
# xover: cross-over/tunnel/hop/gap
#
DEF xover ~ 0 0 N N 1 F N
F 0 "Y"  50  50 50 H I L CNN "Reference"
F 1 "?"  50 -50 50 H I L CNN "Value"
F 6 "R" -50  50 50 H I R CNN "Spice_Primitive"
F 4 "0" -50 -50 50 H I R CNN "Spice_Model"
DRAW
# arc/hop
A 0 0   50  900 -900         001 01 +00 N
X 1 1    0  100   50 D 50 50 001 01     P ~
X 2 2    0 -100   50 U 50 50 001 01     P ~
# straight line
X 1 1    0  100  100 D 50 50 001 02     P ~
X 2 2    0 -100  100 U 50 50 001 02     P ~
# gap
X 1 1    0  100   50 D 50 50 001 03     P ~
X 2 2    0 -100   50 U 50 50 001 03     P ~
ENDDRAW
ENDDEF

#
# tee: T-junction
#
DEF tee ~ 0 0 N N 1 F N
F 0 "Y"    50  50 50 H I L CNN "Reference"
F 1 "?"    50 -50 50 H I L CNN "Value"
F 6 "X"   -50  50 50 H I R CNN "Spice_Primitive"
F 4 "tee" -50 -50 50 H I R CNN "Spice_Model"
DRAW
# T
X 1 1    0  100  100 D 50 50 001 00     P ~
X 2 2    0 -100  100 U 50 50 001 00     P ~
X 3 3  100    0  100 L 50 50 001 00     P ~
# additional dot
C 0 0   20                   001 02 -02 F
ENDDRAW
ENDDEF

#
#End Library

crossover.zip (752 Bytes)

[JohnRob]

@roboya

I like the silly dots because I consider them as an acknowledge from the software, like
“I got it, these to wires are connected”. It happened to me in he past that 2 wires were
very close, but not connected. It wasn’t Kicad.

I agree with this point. While perhaps not needed on paper I agree they play a major role (for me) in drawing the schematic on a CAD program. And in my opinion they are fine in the printed media as well.

Previously when I said the dots were superfluous to knowing the “T” type connections are actually connected. I didn’t mean to suggest they are “bad”, just that the “T” connections in inherently obvious.

[FrancescoC]

Looks like someone cut across the page