Is it possible to change connections in PCB? If not could there be

I’m designing a board with a number of terminal strips. Of course I created the schematic first an layed it out so it looked pretty on the screen.

Now on the PCB I have all sorts of crossed traces (at the moment they are still rats nest lines). To move the terminal numbers so the traces fall more naturally is a real pain to do it manually. i.e. write down the terminal to component changes then go to the schematic and make them happen.

It would be great if I could do this graphically in PCB.

John

I know that you are not new to this forum… To get a good layout, I find that often the pcb needs to drive the schematic, in addition to the schematic driving the pcb.

But your post loses something in the translation without any pictures. Can you post 1-2 images or a board and/or schematic file? How many layers are you planning for your pcb?

In a recent project, I had 3 tracks interconnecting a 74HC4020 binary counter chip output to a 74HC138 3-input to one of eight decoder… Really I wanted to cross the tracks between the two ICs but I did not, so that the most significant binary output went to the least significant of the three input lines of the 3 to 8 decoder. I did not give it as much thought as I should have. The result was not a failure, but was not quite what I ideally wanted either.

My case is much simpler. Although I have already made the changes manually, the original starting placement had all the transistor traces (marked in green) crossed.
I had to swap the location of the terminals and invert them to get what I have now.

It might have been easier if I could somehow edit the netlist while in PCB (either graphically or textually)

image

Couldn’t you make the changes then invoke the “Update Schematic from PCB…” dialog?

You can create nets in KiCad V6 with PCB Editor / Inspect / Net Inspector It’s got a + in the lower left corner to add a new (but still empty) net. Then you can edit the properties of any pad, and make it part of your newly created net.

There is also an action plugin that can create netlist information, I think it works by just drawing tracks between pad. It’s been a few years since I last saw it though.
A bit later, I think it was this one: https://github.com/devbisme/WireIt

Disadvantage of these methods is that it only gives you a netlist, and no schematic.

Therefore my preferred method is to just put the schematic and PCB editors next to each other, (Dual monitor works great for this) and then draw the connections on the schematic in such a way they fit easily on the PCB.

I am doing it at schematic, but never seen a big problem in swapping bus labels there.

Thank you,

I’ll give this a try :slight_smile:

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