I upgraded to KICAD 6 and regret it. The cosmetic stuff I can live with and I have tracked down the hiding place of most of the functions I use
However there is one function I haven’t cracked yet and that is where the net function is hidden in schematic.
There is a bus and wire function. A wire isn’t a net and doesn’t appear in the rats nest of course There is a flag that can be placed on a wire which seems to cause it to pretend to be a net sometimes if your lucky. Works some times some times not.
Not sure what you mean by net function but a netlist can be exported from the File - Export menu.
Or a net label can be added to a wire using the net label icon
There is an icon to draw a bus bus function
There is an icon to draw a wire wire function
Can’t find a way to draw a net
So how do you draw a net"
I know you can put a net label on a wire but that isn’t a satisfactory method to manage nets
Need to be able to place a net and have it work as expected of nets
Not exactly, but wires which connect pins to other pins always belong to nets. A net label is just a way to give a name to a net explicitly. A wire which isn’t connected to any pin doesn’t form or belong to a net, so wire is not the same as net.
BTW, this I don’t understand at all. V5 worked in the same way, so upgrading has nothing to do with this (unless you talk about upgrading from some pre-historic version which didn’t work this way, or maybe upgrading from Altium. )
TBH I haven’t really used Altium, so it was just a far fetched ad-hoc joke, like “Why this doesn’t work, it says ‘you need Windows 10 or better’, and I have Linux”.
I also had some trouble adjusting, especially when all the icons changed (there is a long thread about that on this forum) but KiCad V6 has many enhancements over it’s predecessors.
My best guess is that you are struggling with some basic concepts, and try to use KiCad by using a “bag of tricks”. For example:
Those “flags” are called labels, and if they do not work in some situation, that would be a very serious bug. It’s more likely you are not using them in the right way. KiCad has 3 different sets of labels (Local, Global, and Hierarchical) and labels are also case sensitive and they have a very specific attachment point. (especially with local labels that can be missed).
I’m guessing you mostly started using KiCad by experimenting. It may help if you combine that with reading parts of the available documentation. This likely gives more meaning to your “bag of tricks” and help you to make better PCB’s and make them more effectively.
No. Every connection between pins is a net. A connection can be made with wires. Even a labeled wire, if it isn’t connected to pins, doesn’t form a net. A label connected to wires/pins can be used to give a name to a net explicitly, otherwise the name is automatically generated using the connected symbol/pin data.
Ok no one knows how to make reliable nets in kicad 6
Imported a project from 5 to 6 expecting to find a feature asked for thee
Needed to make a few minor amendments to said project Should have been a ten to fifteen minute job. Took about 2 hours which I will never get back.
A minor edit to the schematic broke random nets in PCB Repairing broken links broke other random links
This could be linked to some unexpected behaviour between symbols and footprints
However the prototype is now signed off and kicad 6.02 consigned to the bit bin. Future projects specifying the kicad platform won’t be on version 6 anytime soon. It isn’t a platform used a lot but is sometimes specified for whatever reason
I have opened at least 10 version 5 projects in 6.0.x to modify them as original parts not available and not had an issue with any of them.
If there was an issue with this then this forum would be full of reports of
which they are not.
It may help if you describe what issues you have had so that maybe forum members can help with your workflow and overcome them.
I have moved some complex 4 and 6 layer PCBs from V5.1 to V6.0.x without any schematic or PCB connection problems
My issues were just3D models missing as these are not cached in the files and I had to add a legacy model path and the improved error checking complaining about badly placed silkscreen refs
I fail to understand what jimmi is meaning here, and my best guess is that he’s trying to something very much against the way KiCad works, or he has an unusual workflow that triggers an obscure bug.
Still they are not synonymous because a net can be created without wires, at least with overlapping symbol pin ends and putting labels directly to pins.
Then, as a technical detail, there are single pin nets. Each unconnected pin forms its own net. I don’t know why.
Wires and nets are very much related. I think we can agree on that.
In KiCad there simply is no function to draw nets.
you can generate a net in the schematic by either drawing wires between schematic symbols or attaching labels to the pins of schematic symbols.
It’s also possible to insert two schematic symbols next to each other, which will add pin connections to the netlist if pin endpoints map.
Or maybe jimmi was referring to the netlist tools in the PCB editor.
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