Protel AutoTrax does it. So Does Protel SE. So does Dexpcb…
Well I got a lot of replies telling me how I should work.
Not very helpful.
Just say ‘No’, your request is not possible in KiCAD.
That was my question.
Only 35 years. I have been doing layouts for 60+ years. I started with waterproof pens,
moved up to Letraset symbols.
You mention editing the instance of a symbol in Schematic. How does one do that ?
Well you had read my post you will see I recommended Buses and Labels as a solution for your ridiculously “trivial example” so if nothing else I was being “productive”.
It seems with all your experience you missed reading this:
With no judgement on whether this is a good idea or not: there is an existing feature request here that appears to be similar to what OP was looking for. If it would be useful, consider giving the issue a “thumbs up” to show support.
I feel like there was another issue as well, but I can’t find it quickly.
Kavala so you are 35 years out of date? Autotrax, Protel99SE?
I dont know any professional tools that support this. Go and change the symbol in the symbol editor !
I just think it is bad to tie up developers for the unusual wishes of a single user.
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Yep that worked. Slightly quicker method. Thanks.
I understand it is trivial example but it shows that you assume someone writing then a software for your PCB have to follow wires at schematic to find what is connected where. It does not make sense.
At my schematics all microcontroller pins go straight to BUS and these short wires are labeled like MISO, MOSI, SCLK, CSE1, CSE2 so you clearly see what is the function of each pin. Then somewhere else on the bus there are for example two SPI EEPROMs one selected by CSE1 and second by CSE2. So you can have your 64 or 100 pin microcontroller symbol look the same at all schematics. Having its pins organised by ports and in order avoids mistakes with identifying pins by someone writing a software for it.
Well for all you ostriches out there…
One does not wish to swap pins in every project.
Not all projects are the same.
Alternate solutions can work better for some projects.
The bus system, as suggested above is a very good method. I’ve used it often in the past with Schedit.exe by Protel. But bus lines are not the answer in all situations.
Editing pins in Symbol Editor, as invoked from Schematic, works okay but it is somewhat slower and one cannot see the pin alignments with the other parts in the schematic. Which was the reason for doing this in the first place.
Nobody is suggesting that you must use this feature, if it was there. It would be the user’s choice.
Interesting, in KICads own sample schematic on their home page, it is obvious that pins have been swapped around to provide clarity to the diagram.
How is that obvious? I don’t see it.
I see, the pins are all out of sequence. That is just a random arrangement then, is it ?
I don’t think so.
Well, yes, the pin numbers are not sequential. That’s normal in a schematic. (would be a disaster in a PCB layout, sure).
Logical/functional grouping of signals in a schematic symbol is the standard way, pin numbering is irrelevant/secondary.
If you’ve been working 60+ years in a different way, keep on. But then KiCAD and other EDA tools are not for you.
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This has been common practice for as long as electric and electronic schematics have existed. A (well designed) schematic is for easy reading, and schematic symbols are designed to represent the function of a circuit. Pin numbers are not relevant to that. Common parts such as resistors and capacitors don’t show their pin numbers at all (by default).
So, the way I look at this:
- Kicad is what it is, it maybe doesn’t do what everyone wants.
- If you think something would be more generally useful, raise a feature request
- If it’s essential, then you can PAY MONEY to get it implemented!
- In many tools, the way you have to do things isn’t always “what you want”, so you jusy have to work with the way it is…
- alternatively, ask for your money back, and use something else
To be honest, once you’ve edited a part a few times, it doesn’t take long to do it. No, you DON’T have to delete it and re-add it, you can just get it to “reload the updated part”: I was using KiCad to do some audio cable schematics for a radio studio, and the outputs on the mixing console needed to be adjusted, to make the schematic work, so I had to edit the “part” several times. Not a big deal.
Yeah, in this example it’s more practical to edit the symbol from within the schematic editor.
In that way you can swap the pins any way you want without messing with the global library. (Only the local cached symbol gets edited).
And it can give you much more flexibility: You can change the size of the box, add additional graphic elements and text etc.
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