Validating PCB and schematic against each other?

Layout
1

Did there use to be an option where you could validate the PCB layout against the schematic?

It seems to me that I may have made a few changes in one of my schematics that did not track to the accompanying PCB and want to make sure the PCB was correct to begin with.

2

The Parity Check in the DRC still exists.

3

KiCad treats the Schematic and the PCB as separate entities. If you change the schematic, you will have to redo Schematic Editor / Tools / Update PCB from Schematic [F8] to port these changes to the PCB.

The KiCad manual (Chapter 5.2) is very sparse about:

Test for parity between PCB and schematic: when enabled, the design rule checker will test for differences between the schematic and PCB in addition to testing the PCB design rules. This option has no effect when running the PCB editor in standalone mode.

I am not sure how much overlap there is between these two functions.

4

I’d been doodling around with possible changes to one schematic without reflecting the changes to the PC board, especially after re-checking a schematic I’d used as a source for my design and finding two resistors were seriously undersized (the worse of the two was a 1206 component when it was supposed to be three watts!)

I reassembled the schematic from the source drawings (I borrowed the major sections from three other boards in my files), and alternating between the two, I got the PCB and schematic to jibe with each other once again.

I just needed to remember where to check to ensure the parity check was done, and to regenerate the .pro file so the PCB / schematic files could be linked for editing purposes. Thanks both of you!

I do still need a second set of eyes on this board layout to make sure I’m not committing any serious gaffes, but I’ll ask elsewhere when I get a bit of time.

5

I go through my boards with the Highlight Net action (hotkey backtick) on every pad to be sure they connect to where expected. Tedious but better to find errors sooner than later.

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6

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