Multiple nets connected together

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I want to run high current from a battery through a large track, whilst sensing the voltage at the battery via a thin, low-current track. The battery voltage sense line requires different routing to the power track, so it senses the true voltage of the battery, and doesn’t measure any voltage drop that occurs along the high current track.

The tracks are connected together at the battery end, which puts them on the same net, but they need to be on different nets to be treated differently by the router. What’s the correct way to arrange this in KiCAD? One way would be to add a resistor to the sense line, zero-ohm or otherwise, but that adds an entirely superfluous component to my design. Is there a better way?

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A nettie component should solve that task. This is essentially a copper connection point placed at the same position where you would position the resistor from your proposal (which would also work, and could be used as part of a RC-filter in the current measuring loop, so not always superfluous).

Look into kicad standard libraries:

  • symbols: look into “Device” library
  • footprints: there is a special “nettie” library
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Thank you, that’s what I was looking for.