Nested Heirarchical Multi-Channel Tool Schematics

I am so confused by the multi-channel tool.

I have a complicated 24 channel amplifier with schematic hierarchy shown below.

Each individual output unit is a full page schematic, and I need to group them to pair with output connectors and input control signals per set of six.

I was able to follow the instructions in other forum posts to create rule areas, and was even able to make six of them based on a single output unit to quickly test component placement. It worked fine for replicating one output channel to the other five.

But when I try to draw a rule area around all six units to represent a 6 Driver Channel schematic page, it doesn’t let me select it. It seems to only recognize lowest-level heirarchical pages as valid for placement.

I’m lost in how to tell KiCAD that it should place different “levels” of rule area. What I want is that after placing these lowest-level rule areas and laying them out, I can replicate the placement of those lowest-level rule areas inside a middle-level rule area representing a 6-channel unit for a total of 24.

Is this possible? I expected that using nested heirarchical schematics would be recognized as nested layout patterns but I can’t figure it out. Maybe it is too ambitious, I tried using the HeirarchicalPCB extension instead, but it doesn’t work in v9. I’m willing to jump through a lot of hoops but this tool feels like it’s just not possible.

What version are you using? The tool didn’t initially work for nested schematics but this was fixed in 9.0.2

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To add - can you share the project, or a sharable reduced example showing this issue? It may be that in your ‘6 Driver Channels’ sheets there aren’t actually any symbols directly in the sheet (only within the child sheets). I think that might stop the sheet being shown in the list.

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Thanks, this created items in the list for the middle level.

I didn’t get it to work the way I expected, but I should try harder before asking for more help.

My instinct was to define a rule area for the output unit, and then define a rule area around both of those rule areas for the “6 channel output” middle level. I was able to replicate the rule area for a single output unit and that worked great, but getting the lowest-level rule areas to automatically place inside the middle-level rule area gave a mismatch issue. I think I can figure it out, but putting an actual physical component onto the middle level sheet made it an option in the list.