I’m working on a symbol and footprint for a power regulation IC. It is a BGA of sorts with multiple pads connected internally. For example there are about 20 pads connected to the Vout pin. Is there an easier way to connect multiple pads to the same net in the footprint than creating a schematic symbol and then piling up a bunch of invisible pins on top of each other?
Sure. In the footprint, set the pads with the same function to the same pin number, and in the symbol use one pin.
The pin number in the footprint can be a string if that makes it more logical.
Thanks! I guess reassigning hole bunch of pads in a footprint is better than creating hole bunch of invisible pins in a symbol.
Really? I’d rather have a single schematic symbol that encapsulates the part’s quirks instead of a bunch of nearly identical BGA footprints that only differ in how their pins are numbered. I like a footprint to be generic so it can be reused for multiple parts.
But everyone is different. 
2 Likes
I am perennially puzzled why people so often argue for their personal preference, when it makes absolutely no difference to them what someone else’s preference is. A substantial part of the internet is taken up with debates such as “which is better : A or B?”. Intel vs AMD, Windows vs Linux ad infinitum. The whole “which is the best” debate really becomes quite tedious. 99% of the time, all the different options achieve the same goal, with some minor differences in emphasis. There is no best way.
I have certain preferences, but I really don’t care what other people do. It is a good thing that people have a choice, I have no objection to Macs, but I would be very unhappy if they were the only choice available.
There must be something deep in people’s psyche, that they become an evangelist as a way to justify their own decisions which are actually based on personal whim rather than rationality.
I did read @devbisme’s post in the sense of offering a different perspective that outlines the consequences of the choice being made here by the OP?
It’s not just the OP that reads this - there will be plenty of newbies that will not know right away that you need different footprints for the OP’s solution.
PS: this is also typical internet… another poster who jumps in and doesn’t add anything but a meta discussion/opinion 
Wow! The first plant on the forum and to use KiCad! Welcome!
That would be a logical way of doing things, not KiCadian. I agree but the question is how? For example I have ~40 pins connected to the ground internally on the chip. Now piling 40 invisible pins in the symbol editor on top of each other so that they would all make connection is just too ridiculous even for KiCad. There got to be a way to make all of them connected within the symbol editor. What I need is the Wire Tool in the symbol editor… Invisible Wire Tool. Gonna go to launch pad to peddle Invisible Wire Tool to the developers 
1 Like
@ArtG, as I understand you want to have a single symbol pin mapped to multiple footprint pads preserving original numbers of those pads, right? And having multiple visible symbol pins with the same name is not an option for you, correct?
ArtG:
I admit that piling 40 pins on top of each other is an ass pain. That’s why I created the KiPart tool. It builds a schematic part from the pin data you enter into a spreadsheet. One of the functions it performs is piling those multiple ground pins on top of each other (this can be turned on/off with a program option).
Even if you don’t like the way KiPart draws the schematic symbol, you can still let it do most of the grunt work and then open the symbol it created and adjust its appearance to whatever you desire.
2 Likes
Thanks! I will take a look at it. Even so, there is got to be a better way of doing it. It would not be applicable for this part, but if you ever need to change one of the pins, it would be a royal pain in the butt to try to unearth a specific pin from that pile. If you try to change a pin, it will give you only first ~10 pins in the dropdown list in no particular order
BTW do you have a comprehensive list anywhere of all the KiCad tools you’ve created so far?
Correct. The best solution would be to have a tool, kind like a wire tool in EEschema. This way you can create an array of invisible pins and connect them the way you want. This way none of them are going to actually show in the schematics and if you want to edit one of pins later it can be easily done
Or another option/dropdown menu in the pin properties where you can select to connect it to another symbol-net/pin in that symbol…
That’s definitely a problem. I solve that by editing the spreadsheet and regenerating the whole part, but it would be a lot better to be able to edit the part. The limit of 10 pins in the dropdown looks reasonable until you get to things like FPGAs with (possibly) hundreds of ground and power pins.
Oh yeah, that’s easy: KiCost and KiPart. They’re both Python scripts and can be found on PyPi.
Or even just allow you to enter a list of multiple, comma-separated pin numbers in the Pin Properties dialog.
2 Likes
I started a bug report/wish list on the lauchpad for this issue. Please click on the little pen symbol in a yellow circle at the top and select “this bug affects me” if you think it is a good idea
I added my vote on this feature.