Warning: Footprint 'C1' has no assigned symbol

[paulvdh]

@Forgotten_Machines

But, when the task at hand is to create an unknown schematic from an already-built board, you can see how important this “Update Schematic from PCB” can be, …

Some time ago I wrote:

Reverse engineering KiCad project from Gerber files

The goal of this reverse-engineering tutorial is to re-create a complete KiCad project from partial information assuming the only information available is a schematic in some readable, (but not EDA form, such as a .pdf or a .png picture), and a set of gerber files. The Gerber files will create a PCB with much PCB information missing, however, using this method is easier than re-designing a PCB from scratch, and can also be extended to any other program that creates Gerber files. What is “resc…

I think the “Update Schematic from PCB” was not even available then. For some parts I just made a best guess on the schematic, then updated the PCB from the schematic and ran a DRC check. And if there were errors, then I updated the schematic, updated the PCB, and rand DRC again. It was not ideal, but it did get the job done.

In an Ideal world you could use Update Schematic from PCB" and then see ratsnest lines in the schematic, just as you can see now on the PCB. Maybe that will ever be implemented, but for now, being able to import some background images on the PCB is already a great help for reverse engineering.