I’m making of a copy of a schematic in a service manual. So I need to annotate the components in such a way that they correspond to those in the service manual. Apperently Kicad doesn’t like that very much. I switched off the automated annotation in preferences but still it has a mind of it’s own. For example. I place a Resistor on the board and I change the refdes to R2530. Then it happens when I move that component around or make a copy of it that Kicad changes it to exg. R3. Even when I save it with my refdes and load it back in, I can see that some of them have changed. Does any one know what’s goeing on and how i can fix it.
That one is not surprising.
If that is really happening I would like to find out more. I reported an un-resolved bug a couple of months ago and this vaguely reminds me of it although that one involved footprints somehow reverting to those called out in the symbol library.
Anyway one desirable feature would be an option for a ref des prompt rather than an auto-assignment. I have often wanted to juggle ref designations although I did not have as much difficulty as you seem to be having. I guess I did not have more than 3 digits following the R or C.
Can’t say I’ve seen this issue. I can edit the refdeses and they will persist.
I don’t know why you felt you had to switch this off. I leave it at the default, on. With auto annotation all that happens is that when you place a new symbol, it will assign a free number instead of leaving it at R? for example. Either way you have to edit the refdes to the number you want by selecting it and typing E, then entering the desired number. So I don’t see that this matters.
This is expected, as the copy will get a free number.
Read more topics on the forum to raise your level so that you can attach your project or wait for a mod to promote you.
Yes I would like to know exactly what steps the OP uses to “move.”
For me it is not clear if the schematic is copied to service manual or you are trying to make schematic as you found in some (may be very old) service manual.
At the beginning even not understanding in what direction schematic is copied it looked that only schematic is under consideration and not PCB.
Once more it is not clear. You change refdes at schematic or at PCB? Using KiCad from 2017 I have never got an idea to modify refdes at PCB.
Having different ref at schematic and at PCB can in my opinion ‘confuse’ KiCad. So if you modify it at PCB how do you make schematic and PCB coherent again? There are probably tools for that I just have never tried it.
You have the same references at schematic and at PCB and update pcb from schematic (based on references) works correct and then you save them both?
Due to how KiCad handles reference designators and linking between the schematic and the PCB (details can be read here) KiCad can’t easily guess what you want to do. There’s no way to move a symbol between hierarchical sheets while keeping the linkage. Within one sheet you can use the Move or Drag commands which don’t change anything in the symbols. But moving using Cut/Paste or Copy/Paste isn’t the same thing.
There’s Paste Special function for some options. Open the dialog from the context menu → Paste Special and get familiar with the options.
If, after understanding how automatic annotation and Paste Special work, you still want to debug some situation, you can do this: Use Copy on a symbol. Paste it to a plain text editor. You can see the original reference designator there. Paste it to the schematic. Copy it again from the new location and paste to the text editor. Now you can at least see if there’s a difference between what’s in the low level representation and what you see in the schematic. The refdes in the textual representation and in the visible schematic should be the same; if not, there’s a bug.
Paste Special works on the fly in the schematic editor only, so you can’t directly get a textual representation from that. You only see the result in the schematic and can copy it from there.
Do you mean you have checked the reference designators, saved the schematic, open the schematic again, checked the designators again and seen them changed? That would be a bug.