How to generate a partial Netlist?

Hello there.
Back story is that I have a huge Schematic but I only want to manufacture a small part of that.
I’ve got my component group in a hierarchical sheet and want to make a board only with these components.
I’ve read somewhere that it is possible to generate a pertial netlist based on the sheet you’re on but I just can’t find any way of achieving that.

Was the feature removed? Does anyone know how to do it?

cheers
dj_ordje

I’ve never heard of that. I would copy the project, then delete everything not required.

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I don’t work with hierarchical sheets so I don’t have an example to look at. Since the files are text based can you copy that part of the schematic to a new project?

I tried removing the parts I don’t need from the netlist manually, but somehow pcbnew listed them anyway.
There is always the option of just importing all components via the netlist and then deleting the not needed components in pcbnew, causing a bunch of ERC errors.
Just thought there must be an easier way.

Well, after some thought Bob’s plan sounds good. Since this is a sheet copying to a new project and then deleting all other sheets might be easiest.

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Alright then. Multiple projects it is. Thanks!

I found a solution.

Its a workaround but it works actually quite well and is rather simple.
KiCAD creates a .sch file for every sheet in the project, however only lists the main project .sch file in the main window/project browser.
If you go into the actual directory via windows explorer and open the .sch file of the extra sheet (subassembly that you want to manufacture), eeschema opens that file running on its own* and treats it like there’s only one sheet to the project.
And in that case eeschema lets you export a netlist containing only components on the schematic of the subassembly.

Another trick I used here: Of course I had to use hierarchy lables to get my subassembly connected to the mainframe. But I put connectors on the same net as the lables in the subassembly.
When opening the subassembly sheet with eeschema manually, eeschema ignores the hierarchy lables and treats them like globals from what I can see. At least the nets are named properly.
And the conectors are making the conection (see what I did there :slight_smile: ) to the real world, where the subassemblies are not connected by magic lables but by wires and plugs.

*Indicated by the fact that it has its own icon in the taskbar, rather than being a sub-window of KiCAD.

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