Renaming zones to match net names

Hello,

I had to re-name some signals and power segments in the schematic of a working design. The names of the signal lines appear to have changed appropriately in the layout, but the zone names are still the old ones. This leads to a very large number of “Copper area belongs to a net which has no pads.” errors. I believe these errors are caused by a mismatch between the names of the nets and the names of the zones to which they are to connect.

How can I change the names of the zones to match the names of the nets to which they are connected?

Best regards,

Peter

What a surprising chance.
Just a moment ago I had a situation:
Zone connected to net G and connected to one connector pin at net G (may be it is important).
I have changed the net name at schematic to G1.
I have saved the schematic and in PcbNew made “Update PCB from schematic”.
Was not sure what will be with zone net so entered its edition. I noticed that zone net was changed to G1, but I noticed that among nets to select I have also G which should be not there. Unselecting zone and selecting it once more didn’t helped. Closing PcbNew and opening again helped.

I am working at today pre 5.1.6 version.

Hello Piotr,

Thanks for your reply to my question. I tried closing down KiCAD, which of course closes PcbNew, and re-opening it. That didn’t solve the problem. But careful examination showed that all of the problems were with one net name that changed as a result of my re-naming a power net. My fix was to explicitly select each zone with the old name and manually re-name it to the new one. Tedious, but all of the errors found by the DRC prior to that are now fixed.

Thanks again, and

Best regards,

Peter

KiCommand is designed to help with this type of situation via a command line interface. Let me know if you want to explore this and I can work out the appropriate command string.

Edit: the command within KiCommand is something like this:

  • zones copy GetNetname call OLDNAME = filter NEWNAME findnet SetNet callargs

Edit2: Use the already-defined getnetname command, which does the same thing as above:

  • zones copy getnetname OLDNAME = filter NEWNAME findnet SetNet callargs

Edit3: I’ve edited the KiCommand Tutorial and Wiki to break down this particular command and give a detailed explanation. Look for the section on “filters.” I hope it helps!

Thank you for the information on the command-line interface. Where would I find more information about it? Is there a user manual for it?

Best regards,

Peter

KiCommand - Tutorial and Wiki

KiCommand discussion and development - Easy pcbnew command strings; 4.07 & 5.1.5 - contains development notes since the beginning

KiCommand github (including a Readme document)

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