How are no connect pins dealt with in KiCad?
Should i provide pins in the symbol and label them as NC. What happens if i leave them off and then try to connect to a footprint that has more pins than the symbol.
I make them in symbol and mark them with Not-connected flag in Eeschema when making schematic. Blue X mark on right toolbar.
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There is also the electrical pintype nc. When you design a symbol and already know that a specific pin should not be connected you could use that.
(This is the aproach i would take if the datasheet says do not connect or not connected)
Otherwise i would do what @Indir_Okanovic sugested.
I’m not 100% sure but as long as the footprint has more pins than the symbol it should be ok.
(just try it. use a connector symbol with 3 pins and select a connector with 4 pins and see what happens.)
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I’m from the library maintainer-team and we usually enforce having all NC pins in the symbols. they should be set to invisible (so they don’t crowd the schematic) and to the type NOT_CONNECTED. This allows for the pin-count-filter to select the correctly matching package. Sa e.g. you have some IC in DIP8 that has 2 NC-pins that are NOT in the symbol. then the pin-count filter might look for a DIP*-package with 6-pins only!
best,
JAN
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Is it a good idea to have them invisible?
Can’t one accidentally connect them to something?
On the plus side maybe the schematic is less cluttered this way. (In my personal library i never set any pin to invisible. Even nc pins are visible. I have been bitten once by an invisible pin never again.)
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Sounds similar bad as the invisible VCC/VSS pins on the those logic ICs…
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