On a schematic, anything that overlaps a subsheet rectangle is not printed

In a schematic, anything that overlaps a sub-sheet rectangle can be seen in the schematic editor but is absent from print preview and from the printout.
The space occupied by the sub-sheet rectangles is useful to enclose information about the sub sheet as can be seen from the attachment.
I can’t provide more useful information because I’m a level 0 user.
Apart from taking a screenshot, how can schematics be printed as they appear in the schematic editor?
Thanks in anticipation

I can’t provide more useful information because I’m a level 0 user.

To overcome this restriction you could discover the secrets written from a wise men in this FAQ-article: New Member Information. If you follow the advice you could move up to basic user level and then are free to post more pioctures and also (very important) to attach example projects.

Apart from taking a screenshot, how can schematics be printed as they appear in the schematic editor?

  • File–>Export–>Drawing to clipboard gives you a bitmap in the OS-clipboard (useful for documentation in the word processor)
  • File–>Plot can natively create PDF/SVG/DXF files
  • normally Print–>Print to virtual printer driver should also work (apart from your discovered edge case).
  • Printing in black&white mode works and shows the text inside the subsheet-rectangles. (Thats because B&W printing just ignores all fill colors)

additional remark: it’s always useful and appreciated to inform the readers about the used kicad version (for easy questions it’s enough to write “kicad v7.0.45”, for something which might be a bug the complete kicad + OS information from “Kicad–>Help–>About Kicad–>Copy Version information” is useful.

In a schematic, anything that overlaps a sub-sheet rectangle can be seen in the schematic editor but is absent from print preview and from the printout.

Regarding your main question: yes, it’s most probably a bug, but as Kicad relies on the used programming toolkit (wxwidgets) for printing there is probably no easy solution. See the discussions and explanations on these older gitlab threads:

Nevertheless you could open a bugreport on gitlab. I recommend to use the kicad builtin function: Kicad–>Help–>Report bug. This ensures that the issue contains at least all needed version information. If you do so, please attach a example project. And be as detailed with your description as possible.

Apart from that, you seem to be using global labels for your subsheets instead of hierachical labels.
I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

4 Likes

ML9104 - As a retired software engineer I agree but have been out-voted by the other retired engineers on this volunteer ride-on railway signalling team

mf_ibfeew
Black & white printing works

Thanks

Hi mf_ibfeew
The Schematic Editor documentation is so good that I’ve probably not read any forum replies for more than 5 minute so I can’t see myself getting to level 1 anytime soon. Is there a way of finding out how close I am to getting level 1?

Oops! Just noticed the panel about putting several replies together in one post

Is there a way of finding out how close I am to getting level 1?

With Firefox (not sure with other browsers): Right-click your profile-name “DaveGray”–>firefox-contextmenu–>open Link in new Tab → shows your profile-page with all more or les interesting numbers.
Viewing your profile and comparing with the needed values for Basic User level:

  • read time: 10minutes needed - 36min spend → enough
  • number of read topics: 5 needed - already 6 topics opened → enough
  • number of read answers: 30 answers need - but only 16 posts read → so look for a longer thread (with >=15 posts), read that and you should get your level-up.

Normally I should be able to manually promote you, but I’m a little overwhelmed with all the possibilities in this forum.

@DaveGray65

:slightly_smiling_face:
You don’t have to read the posts, clicking on them will suffice.

Leveled up. :wink: … and padding.

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