I’m designing a board that involves arranging leds into shapes [image below]. I divided them into separate sheets so that every shape (the shapes are all the same), has each own sheet [schematic below]. Before kicad 9 I was able to arrange one shape and than use the replicate layout plugin to arrange all other leds into same shapes. When I’ve learned that replicate layout will be a built in feature in the new version I was really happy, especially because I was about to redesign my previous board due to having chosen the wrong footprint. Unfortunately the new feature doesn’t really work that well. It can replicate the shape but it does not place the correct elements in the places they should be at.
The image above depicts the problem I am having (please ignore the messy silkscreen). My idea was to run parallel anode tracks through the board and connect each led to its corresponding track. As you can see the first segment are leds 1-16, the second one 17-32. So on the second segment D17 should be where the D1 is on the first one. D18 where the D2 is and so on. Instead Repeat layout gave me this weird arrangement. I don’t know whether if I’m doing something wrong or the feature just doesn’t work. So far I’ve tried the following:
- Redrawing the schematic
- Using repeat layout for just two segmentsmanually anotating the schematic
- Using the Replicate layout plugin (does not work in the new version)
- manually drawing the placement rule areas
Here is my schematic for this:
char block 1
each segment side by side
As you can see there are a lot of them, so I would like to avoid placing each led by hand at all cost
