This might work if you changed how you labeled things. Instead of using net labels (which won’t show on the finished board), you can change the values of the three “MountingHole_Pad” (though I may have used either THT test points or single pin connectors) to more descriptive values (like SW1C, SW1NO, and SW1NC for Common, NormallyOpen, and NormallyClosed). Then when laying out the board you can show the value in the silkscreen layer. I would also add a SW1 symbol to the schematic with the switches set to include in BOM but exclude from PCB. This would give you full reign to put the three wire footprints anywhere on the board you like.
Thanks for the suggestion. Actually that was my first approach, but I when I wrote the initial post, I was limited to one image. Otherwise I would have included this one too:
But although this seemed to work in principle, I was not really convinced by this solution, as the footprint of the switch symbol is still flying around somewhere on the board. And leaving the footprint empty throws an error (ok, that could be ignored/tweaked, but still…).
I agree that the labels could be more descriptive. But what I’d like to know: you wrote I should change the values. In fact I changed the reference, and this seemed to work as well. At least the entry appears on the silkscreen layer.
So what would be the benefit of using the value field?
BlackCoffee, thanks to you as well. But my question aimed for a much wider “spread”. Like “wire 1 goes directly to ground”, “wire 2 goes to the VC rail” and “wire 3 is soldered close to the whatevercomponent”.
As retiredfeline did guess, I consider myself limited to one-layer boards, and hence I was trying to reduce the number of vias. But I admit that the term “spread” is not really good. I thought about “distributed” but that sounded too much like an homogeneous arrangement of pads within a certain range/area. “Dislocated” is probably quite medical, but then again, it describes something that is not at the place where it is supposed to be, so…
The Ref’d field is constrained by needing to end with a number. Switch pin number 1 tells me nothing about the function of the pin without intimate knowledge of the switch being used (useful for understanding the schematic and/or troubleshooting the circuit). Using the value field is more flexible with the contents to allow you to give descriptions of the function of the pins while leaving the pin number in the Ref’d.
