I have a power input in my design, call it AC1, that feeds some higher current components. The same power net is also connected to a very low current zero-crossing detector. Both the high current and low current pads are on the AC1 net, which makes sense.
Now I’m laying out the board and have set some fairly hefty trace width and clearance parameters for AC1, they automatically apply to all the pads and traces for that net, both the high power ones which need it and the low power zero-crossing input which don’t. On a trace-by-trace basis I can select a different width for the low current traces, and I can edit the individual pads on the low-current piece to specify a smaller, but still appropriate, clearance, however this feels a bit manual and error prone. Also if I change my mind about the trace widths or clearances for this low current piece, I have to remember to change all places. I particularly don’t love the individual pad-clearance edits which are easy to get out of sync.
What I’d like to be able to do is have the lower-current pads be on a separate, but connected, net, say AC1_LC, but I can’t figure out a way to do this. I tried splitting the schematic so that the zero-crossing was powered by ‘AC1_LC’ and then connected that label to AC1 elsewhere, but KiCad worked out it was all the same net really and everything continued to be AC1.
If I added a passive between the two, even a 0 ohm resistor, that would split the net, but obviously I don’t want to add an extra component I don’t need. Is there a way to logically split a net like this on the schematic so that it remains connected, but the two halves are differently-named such that I can apply different design rules for them?