What's the correct way to replicate layout

Layout
1

I’m reading several posts and tutorials about layout replication but most of them are outdated and I still and a confusion.

Currently I have a quite complex schematic with nested hierarchical blocks and custom annotations.
I also routed most of the traces (few lines will be routed when the current layout will be duplicated).

In detail, my whole PCB has a round shape and my base layout is placed in a quadrant (1/4 of the circle). I need to duplicate it other 3 times and rotate each one of 90 ° to fill the whole circle.

Do I need to duplicate the schematic first or I can duplicate the layout and then update back the schematic? All the nets , but few ones, should have different names. To better understand: only the busses (i.e. i2c) and power will be in common, the others will be independent of course.

Is there any specific tool to make it easier?

Application: KiCad Schematic Editor x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 9.0.4-9.0.4-0~ubuntu25.04.1, release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.2.6
	FreeType 2.13.3
	HarfBuzz 10.2.0
	FontConfig 2.15.0
	libcurl/8.12.1 OpenSSL/3.4.1 zlib/1.3.1 brotli/1.1.0 zstd/1.5.6 libidn2/2.3.8 libpsl/0.21.2 libssh2/1.11.1 nghttp2/1.64.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.6.9

Platform: Ubuntu 25.04, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, ubuntu, x11
OpenGL: NVIDIA Corporation, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080/PCIe/SSE2, 4.6.0 NVIDIA 580.65.06

Build Info:
	Date: Aug 18 2025 02:17:21
	wxWidgets: 3.2.6 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.83.0
	OCC: 7.8.1
	Curl: 8.12.1
	ngspice: 44.2
	Compiler: GCC 14.2.0 with C++ ABI 1019
	KICAD_IPC_API=ON

Locale: 
	Lang: en_GB
	Enc: UTF-8
	Num: 1,234.5
	Encoded кΩ丈: D0BACEA9E4B888 (sys), D0BACEA9E4B888 (utf8)
2

Have you read the V9.x.y user manual ? this functionality is built in to V9.x.y

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3

I apologize, but I’m not able to find anything related neither in the schematic nor in the pcb sections. Looking at the chapter titles I found nothing about replicating or duplicating parts of the PCB and even searching with those keywords seem not useful:

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Perhaps is this operation properly called with a different name?

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4
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5

Thanks, I would never have guessed that they called it “multi-channel”! I’m reading it right now!

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6

An unfortunate byproduct of a community plugin “Replicate layout” and native support “Multichannel”. It is fantastic that this is now built-in and extends the capability but there is enough web inertia refering to “replicate”. Hopefully the spiders find this post to assist in the association.

The official documentation is here.
PCB Editor | 9.0 | English | Documentation | KiCad

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