Kicad 8 & 9 "Net Navigator"

Software
1

Anyone know what this is and how to use it?

2

Its in the manual . . .

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3 Likes
3

Thanks, but currently I don’t see the need/use of this navigator and that’s ok for now.

4

I could see its useful if you’re trying to track down a net-related issue, like why something appears to be in the wrong (standalone) net, because it didn’t QUITE join in the schematic.

5

What does that mean?

6

Simply that you made a trivial mistake when drawing your schematic, and a wire you THOUGHT was connected to another wire or pin, is actually off by a tiny bit. So it LOOKS connected, but it isn’t.

7

Is that even possible to almost connect in the schematics, even at a low set grid? And even if that happens, isn’t that easy viewed with the Net Highlight? Or maybe not if you have plenty of schematics sheets you mean?

8

I think that may be a key driver for this feature . . . to show how a net connects across sheets.

1 Like
9

I don’t really see the advantage of using this Net Navigator to navigate through the sheets as it also works fine to choose the pages via the Schematic Hierarchy panel. The main reason/ function for the Net Navigator is probably something else…

10

as it also works fine to choose the pages via the Schematic Hierarchy panel

Yes, that works also and was the advised workflow until now: highlight a net, then click through all schematic sheets and look for the highlighted connections.
This had some inconveniences:

  • you had to manually activate every subsheet
  • you had to do a zoom out command (or “zoom to fit”) on every sheet to get the whole sheet on your view
  • especially on crowded sheets and short nets it could happen to overlook a connected segment

My usecases for the net navigator panel:

  • used only for multi-sheet schematics
  • at the end phase of a design - checking suspicious connections
  • if I have a unknown design where I don’t know the schematics very well (design from collegues, customers, older design with devices for repair). Then the net navigator helps to understand the schematic and find the next connected nodes for a net.

I had preferred a different solution for these tasks (gitlab issues 10911+12156), but the net navigator is better than the previous situation with manually following the highlighted net.

11

That’s a good point!