Dear All
In some electrical diagrams, it can be useful to draw a colored path over one or more nets. This path does not interact with the net table, but is only intended to help the reader understand the path of a signal (a typical example: highlighting the reception or transmission of a radio signal).
As an example, I’ve attached a schematic with this path highlighted.
Is it possible with a plug-in?
Or is it better to use a function integrated into KiCad?
it is possible without a plugin, using netclasses (if you are on 9.0.x or above for sure, in prev. versions i don’t remember but i think not)
Net classes are not quite the same thing. Note the colored lines continuing through the inductors L505 & L506.
I think I prefer Net Classes though, as if printing in B & W, the schematic would not look good with the above example.
that’s right, even defining a color with NC, this behavior could not be achieved.
Pretty close but not exact.
Yes, netclasses work a bit different, but I feel it’s a much better method then just using colored lines. But if you wish, graphical lines can have any color, width or transparency (opacity) setting you like.
Agree.
Especially if you have ever tried to read a B&W photocopied schematic that was originally printed in color with color highlighted paths; something that has more than once resulted in four letter word cursing by me.
In the days before electronic documentation, I was once given a photocopy of a programming reference where the original owner had highlighted all the important bits with a highlighter marker. The result was my copy looked like it had been censored – all of the important bits had black bars over the text and were unreadable.
