Add your authoritative opinion here: Poll: should KiCad support hop-over or not?
1 Like
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.
1 Like
Hello!
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?
4 Likes
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.
3 Likes
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
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.
2 Likes
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
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.
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!!!
Same here.
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! 
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
Hi @BobZ
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.
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)
1 Like
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.
Looks like someone cut across the page
Hope this helps.
1 Like
Afraid not.
The correct answer is the middle one and the left one (with the left one not making a cross connection)
1 Like
Im genuinely surprised to see the vehement opposition to a display only feature that based on community feedback would clearly be set to the current style by default if it was implemented. There are clearly old manuals that say hop-overs are a way to show line crossings. And most of the hate here seems to be about the dots vs no dots for joins… which wasn’t (originally at least) the question.
Welcome to the community.
For me at least the passion I showed for a particular approach is me trying to communicate those things I’ve learned working with schematics over the years.
Not so much these days of digital communications but when a schematic is copied a few times (perhaps a phone photo of a phone photo) the fine details of the schematic start to disappear.
here are clearly old manuals that say hop-overs are a way to show line crossings.
Yes and we’ve learned since then.
seems to be about the dots vs no dots for joins… which wasn’t (originally at least) the question.
Correct, however the alternate to hop overs are dots or no dots.
Keep in mind this forum is a mix of hobbyists and professionals and KiCad developers are aiming toward professional PCB design. So adding a non industry standard feature is not in their charter.
Definitely a fair point. And as someone who is a bit of a standards junkie I know how non-obvious the professional way to do things can be, and I don’t really have any opinion on the professionalism angle as a non-professional when it comes to electronic circuit design…
However I do find it unintuitive based on years of work designing flowcharts/diagrams of all types as a professional software developer (and personal non work note taking too) where things like clearly unambiguously crossing lines has lead to widespread use of bridges and hops in diagraming, as opposed to having simple cross and dot join styles and even at the extremes to paradigms like that of the DRAKON visual programming language where lines cannot ever cross.
The notion that “there is one way” to visually show an arrangement of lines that both join physically and cross visually in a way that does not represent physical joining feels honestly a little silly after using literally dozens of diagraming tools over the years to produce everything from basic Visio flowcharts to ISO certification related UML diagrams. There may be industry conventions… but that doesn’t make having more options a bad thing 
as long as its a visual option client side that has no effect on the file structure, I genuinely don’t see any harm at all. Its like how some fonts are better for dyslexia, sometimes its good to have options that may be better for the end user to help them understand, even if it looks less professional (because most of the dyslexic friendly fonts look kinda like a shaking hand drawing Comic Sans)