Why two pins are invisibile for IC 4017?

Pin 8 (VSS) and pin 16 (VDD) are missing invisible. There’s sure a reason behind that, right ?
In the schematic, I need to connect VDD and VSS to 9V and ground respectively…

Sorry if the question seems silly.

1 Like

The question is not silly, it is KiCad and it’s libraries that are silly. KiCad has this silly feature where a hidden power pin automatically connects to any net of the same name. So pin 16 will become connected to a net on your board that is called “VDD”. You will find that the 4000 series library as well as the 74xx series library are like this. It is silly and dangerous but fortunately it is in the process of being changed.

You have two options, the first would be to add a label to your 9V net and call it “VDD”. The second, and most sensible, option would be to edit the 4017 component and make the pins visible.

1 Like

Thank you for the clear explanation. I hope this changes as well. I am new to KiCad and didn’t find it intuitive at all.

I have made the pins visible but it still don’t show up on the schematic. It might sound weird, but every time I save the new library successfully and import the component, it revert back to being “invisible”.
Can you please check that ? I am on Lubuntu 16.04. The project directory has 2 libraries: “ring_counter_cache.lib” and my newly created “ring_counter.lib”

Edit: Here is a screen shot after modifying the part then choosing it on the schematic

In the library manager, Preferences -> Component Libraries, make sure your ring_counter library is before the cmos library. Another thing that will hopefully change soon.

1 Like

Yes, it worked as you said. My thanks again.

The frustrating thing is that this hidden power pin nonsense must have been coded at some effort to make KiCad behave like commercial package XYZ