Tutorial was great. One suggestion I have is to have the global port coming out of and into the sheet objects. In this example it's pretty obvious but that won't always be the case. Knowing which sheet a signal came from or goes to at the top level helps the readablility of the overall schematic.
Hello John. Turns out it is already there. use the hierachical label an "A" with a diamond to the right of it, on the sub sheet and select import sheet pin at the top level. You can now wire the submodules together.@@JohnsBasement
@@jimbrooks5496 I must not understand your suggestion. "Global" is not hierarchical. I suspect you did not mean a "global pin" in your original note... Which changes things. My point was to address those used to flat multisheet schematics znd that use global nets... Not to suggest that doing so is desirable. It is a common "complaint" that kicad does not support such designs. However one can, if they simply drop some pages somewhere and proceed like they would with Orcad. (Last time I used Orcad, it did not support hierarchical multisheet.)
@JohnsBasement this would be easier if I cd send a screen shot. The hierarchical label adds a symbol on the lower sheet, kind of like a port global port, but where the global port can't be inserted into the upper level sheet symbol, the hierarchical label shows and can be used to run connects between top or upper level sheet symbols. This way, the rx tx lines from a comes subsheet could be used to connect the comes subsheet to the processor subsheet making the connections visible. Global make them electrical connected but doesn't give the you 50000 foot view of the design.
Good stuff.....See what ya mean about being able to just import from previous work, so over time new projects can move faster with tried and tested( hopefully) blocks.
I hope that we can find a uniform design and archival style such that we can start a site with a peer reviewed sharable 'sheets'. And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd love it if we could even share & merge partially routed boards.
I had tried several videos about this topic, but tis one is the only one tha is objetive, with real substance and knwoledge , it is as good that what l learned here did right away on my designs with a high rate of inmediate success, wish others had the same cleaver and common sense that Mr John has, I sincerly apreciate all your efforts and sharing your wisdom with our comunitty.
Hi there. When I want to use the command "Save as" it only applies as "Save Current Sheet as..." but there is no button to re-save the complete Project with another name. Is there a way to run a "Save as..." for the whole project? I cannot find it in the video. Do I need to save each sheet separately if I want to try modifications? I don't want to end with 10 different sheets with 10 different versions on each sheet. Any help is appreciated.
There is no convenient way to just save a copy of a project (that I'm aware of.) So I abuse the project template function for copying projects. It is trivial to do but you need to realize what it is doing before blindly diving in. I posted a video on how I use it to copy & rename projects with KiCad 5 here: th-cam.com/video/A4_wqnzKZq4/w-d-xo.html
Not in any way I know of. This topic comes up in the KiCad Info discussion groups. You might want to see what the latest news is there: forum.kicad.info/
Much is the same. Many have said that this is still relevant. Since they now change the major rev number every year, it would be ineffective to re-record the series every year just to make that match. The fundamentals of the tools remains the same. Some of the default key mappings have changed. Some new features have been added. I suppose at this point a difference to a new user that might be important is that you no longer have to save and then load the netlist when transferring from the schematic to the PCB editor. There is an icon in the same area on the PCB editor that just the whole thing in one go.
I address that in part 17. I should have given a better overall view of the topic before getting into it here. The fact is that I have seen an ENDLESS number of questions from users about replicating their flat designs as-is while they upgrade to KiCad. So I discuss both ways in this series. Upgrading from, say, Orcad is tough enough without going all-in on hierarchical symbols.
@@JohnsBasement My apologies John for my draft look - just later realized there is next story on hierarchical design. You are doing this video tutorials thing right! TY for that!
@@gatisgaigals1729 😂 no prob. This series sort-of just happened. If/when i find the time to do a second fraft for, say KiCad 6, I hope it will be a bit more fluid. Keep rhe critique comming.
What's the point of those empty rectangles on the root sheet that you click on to reach each sub-sheet? Would you put them somewhere off screen normally? Not sure why you need those anyhow if you have the navigator window.
You can place them off sheet if they are not part of the schematic's /meaning/. Often they will have signals associated with them in a way that is the schematic form of a subroutine. Such signals are then the I/O of the sub-schematic. For example, draw up an analog mic mixer with 32 preamp inputs.
@@JohnsBasement Thankyou for the reply but my head's not grasping this. Those just look like empty rectangles. Why would you want empty rectangles on your sheet taking up space? What meaning can an empty rectangle convey? Thanks!
@@MatthewSmith-wh5dr they mean there is another page. Many CAD tools don't require such things to be created. KiCad does. Review your thoughts on the subject after watching the hierarchical schematic discussion. Bigger projects often go that route.
@@JohnsBasement Got it. I'm sure it will make sense once I see it in action in a real project. For me right now, I'm having them off the page to make room. :)
@@MatthewSmith-wh5dr That's fine too. I think I have a recording where I discuss that style for those that don't like hierarchical designs. That is a matter of preference. It is just that KiCad does not have a way to create a multi-sheet drawing without using a hierarchical style. So you have to put those boxes somewhere.
What happens if you started a project, and then realized that it had to grow to multi-sheets? Can I add a parent sheet and declare my former only sheet as a child? What about a project that is going to be done across several PC boards, but I want to create a multi-sheet schematic that has net names for connections between the boards via a wiring harness? I will need to create each PC board from a set of sheets. I guess the over all connection would be a 'grand parent' sheet that shows the connections between each parent sheet (which is the top sheet for each board), and the set of child boards fore each parent (pc) board. I've seen schematics where each board was drawn on the top sheet as a 'part' and the top sheet showed all the connections between boards. Then each board was a set of child schematics, the parent of these was the 'part' shown in the top sheet. How to do something like that?
You might be able to make a single-sheet project a parent by playing games with renaming files. But I'd play it safe and create a new project with its top page as the new 'root page' and then copy the sheet from the original/old project to the new project and then use it as the file in a new sub-sheet. Multi-boards comes up once in a while on the kicad forums. I am not aware of any viable solution. You might try asking about this in forum.kicad.info/ Until KiCad implements multiple boards in one project then I think the idea of drawing a multi-board connection schematic might have to be its own project.
Not sure what you mean here. The ends of wires always snap to the closest grid point. If they are all over then change your grid to .05" (I'd prefer .1" but there are too many parts in the libraries that have pins on .05" centers.)
@@Berghiker all the library symbols use .1" or .05" centers for the pins. IF you do NOT use a .05" grid in your schematics AND for all of YOUR components too then you are going to have this problem.
Hey John, what program do you use for circuit simulation? I'm assuming you're using it with Ubuntu...? Can you use the schematic editor from KiCad and export the resulting netlist into the circuit simulation program...? Thx for any help, love the series!
I haven't used circuit similation with kicad. So I can not offer an opinion on doing so. I'm sure others have. You might ask about it in the various kicad forums.
I don't know if you can. Sheet page numbers are assigned in the order that the 'sheet symbols' are added to your project. Therefore, in theory, you can copy all of the sheet symbols to new ones in the order that you want your pages to be numbered and then delete the original symbols. BUT, if you do this, your part/component reference designators will all change and that will make any PCB that you have been working on into a broken mess. So.. don't try this unless you ONLY have a schematic in your project. If you want to get creative (and risk completely destroying your project), FIRST, make a backup your project and then try poking around inside the .sch files to see if you can edit the page numbers that are stored within. They are all plain ASCII files, you any text editor can open them. I read somewhere that the page numbers are based on the order that the sheets appear in the .sch file within which they are defined. For example, in an old project I have around I can see a set of these 'stanzas' in my root level page: $Sheet S 1750 3300 1750 550 U 5D92F9C9 F0 "CPU3" 50 F1 "CPU3.sch" 50 $EndSheet I can also see that each of these stanzas are in sheet/page-number order. If I cut & paste the stanzas in a different order (without otherwise altering them in any way) , it APPEARS that I have changed the page numbers on the sheets while not having 'broken' anything. Beware! I would not bet more than a round of drinks on this method being safe. Nor would I expect it to be stable/viable in future releases of kicad.
"creating new sheet in kicad without using Hierarchical Sheet is possible or not..." Because while converting it to the pdf file the root sheet contain all the sub_sheet block (table) in it ,which was created by us. It seems not good in the font page. How can I solve this problem? Could anybody can help me in this problem.
Hierarchical is the only way. You can spec printing pages 2-n. But then the sheet numbers start at 2. When i want multisheet & no hierarchy, i put small sheet symbols for pages 2-n at the bottom of my sheet 1 (which is also full of my page-1 schematic.) You can also put the sheet symbolsoutside of the page borders on your sheet 1. Then they won't print at all.
Not yet. Between plagues and my having started some new hobby projects that have gotten out of hand... I have not had much time to record any new vids. So, what do you want to know about power supplies?
If you can reproduce it easily , it would be valuable to report the "lost connections / bubbles" stuff to the KiCad bug tracker (bugs.launchpad.net/kicad).
I'm learning KiCad and these videos are quite helpful. Thank you for taking the time to do these videos John.
Glad you like them!
really appreciate you getting straight to the point, thank you!
You're welcome
Tutorial was great. One suggestion I have is to have the global port coming out of and into the sheet objects. In this example it's pretty obvious but that won't always be the case. Knowing which sheet a signal came from or goes to at the top level helps the readablility of the overall schematic.
That would be a change to the design of KiCad. You'll have to take it up with the developers.
Hello John. Turns out it is already there. use the hierachical label an "A" with a diamond to the right of it, on the sub sheet and select import sheet pin at the top level. You can now wire the submodules together.@@JohnsBasement
@@jimbrooks5496 I must not understand your suggestion. "Global" is not hierarchical. I suspect you did not mean a "global pin" in your original note... Which changes things.
My point was to address those used to flat multisheet schematics znd that use global nets... Not to suggest that doing so is desirable.
It is a common "complaint" that kicad does not support such designs. However one can, if they simply drop some pages somewhere and proceed like they would with Orcad. (Last time I used Orcad, it did not support hierarchical multisheet.)
@JohnsBasement this would be easier if I cd send a screen shot. The hierarchical label adds a symbol on the lower sheet, kind of like a port global port, but where the global port can't be inserted into the upper level sheet symbol, the hierarchical label shows and can be used to run connects between top or upper level sheet symbols. This way, the rx tx lines from a comes subsheet could be used to connect the comes subsheet to the processor subsheet making the connections visible. Global make them electrical connected but doesn't give the you 50000 foot view of the design.
Great video, it's very helpful for me(fresher with this tool) ! Hoping you will have more video like this.
Good tutorial! I am designing DAC including discrete I/V stage that is big schmatic size. this tutorial is very useful to me.
Glad I could help!
Great video. I need to make a couple of other sheets and I was not sure how to do it. Thanks.
Such a great course. If it was on Udemy I'd gladly pay for it.
Good stuff.....See what ya mean about being able to just import from previous work, so over time new projects can move faster with tried and tested( hopefully) blocks.
I hope that we can find a uniform design and archival style such that we can start a site with a peer reviewed sharable 'sheets'. And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd love it if we could even share & merge partially routed boards.
Great in depth video. Thank you John.
great video...thank you very much......i really needed it for my project
You're welcome!
I had tried several videos about this topic, but tis one is the only one tha is objetive, with real substance and knwoledge , it is as good that what l learned here did right away on my designs with a high rate of inmediate success, wish others had the same cleaver and common sense that Mr John has, I sincerly apreciate all your efforts and sharing your wisdom with our comunitty.
Thank you for this incredible review! I'm glad to know that people are getting something out of it.
Thank you so much for this awesome video tutorial!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hi there. When I want to use the command "Save as" it only applies as "Save Current Sheet as..." but there is no button to re-save the complete Project with another name. Is there a way to run a "Save as..." for the whole project? I cannot find it in the video.
Do I need to save each sheet separately if I want to try modifications? I don't want to end with 10 different sheets with 10 different versions on each sheet.
Any help is appreciated.
There is no convenient way to just save a copy of a project (that I'm aware of.) So I abuse the project template function for copying projects. It is trivial to do but you need to realize what it is doing before blindly diving in. I posted a video on how I use it to copy & rename projects with KiCad 5 here:
th-cam.com/video/A4_wqnzKZq4/w-d-xo.html
Now, what if I have a project with 7 or 8 PCBs? Can multiple sheets be used to layout multiple PCBs?
Not in any way I know of.
This topic comes up in the KiCad Info discussion groups. You might want to see what the latest news is there:
forum.kicad.info/
@@JohnsBasement github.com/mmccoo/kicad_mmccoo maybe this answers your question?
Love your video explanations. Q: Are there any substantial differences in this v5 tutorial, in newer versions of KiCad, ie: v7?
Much is the same. Many have said that this is still relevant. Since they now change the major rev number every year, it would be ineffective to re-record the series every year just to make that match. The fundamentals of the tools remains the same. Some of the default key mappings have changed. Some new features have been added. I suppose at this point a difference to a new user that might be important is that you no longer have to save and then load the netlist when transferring from the schematic to the PCB editor. There is an icon in the same area on the PCB editor that just the whole thing in one go.
Awesome tutorial! Thanks for sharing, subscribed.
Glad to know I could help!
Wow so cool. Thanks John
U R welcome!
The main idea behind hierarchical sheets in fact is not about using global symbols in sub-sheets for connections between sheets...
I address that in part 17.
I should have given a better overall view of the topic before getting into it here. The fact is that I have seen an ENDLESS number of questions from users about replicating their flat designs as-is while they upgrade to KiCad. So I discuss both ways in this series. Upgrading from, say, Orcad is tough enough without going all-in on hierarchical symbols.
@@JohnsBasement My apologies John for my draft look - just later realized there is next story on hierarchical design. You are doing this video tutorials thing right! TY for that!
@@gatisgaigals1729 😂 no prob. This series sort-of just happened. If/when i find the time to do a second fraft for, say KiCad 6, I hope it will be a bit more fluid.
Keep rhe critique comming.
What's the point of those empty rectangles on the root sheet that you click on to reach each sub-sheet? Would you put them somewhere off screen normally? Not sure why you need those anyhow if you have the navigator window.
You can place them off sheet if they are not part of the schematic's /meaning/.
Often they will have signals associated with them in a way that is the schematic form of a subroutine. Such signals are then the I/O of the sub-schematic.
For example, draw up an analog mic mixer with 32 preamp inputs.
@@JohnsBasement Thankyou for the reply but my head's not grasping this. Those just look like empty rectangles. Why would you want empty rectangles on your sheet taking up space? What meaning can an empty rectangle convey? Thanks!
@@MatthewSmith-wh5dr they mean there is another page. Many CAD tools don't require such things to be created. KiCad does.
Review your thoughts on the subject after watching the hierarchical schematic discussion. Bigger projects often go that route.
@@JohnsBasement Got it. I'm sure it will make sense once I see it in action in a real project. For me right now, I'm having them off the page to make room. :)
@@MatthewSmith-wh5dr That's fine too. I think I have a recording where I discuss that style for those that don't like hierarchical designs. That is a matter of preference.
It is just that KiCad does not have a way to create a multi-sheet drawing without using a hierarchical style. So you have to put those boxes somewhere.
Great video as usual...
What happens if you started a project, and then realized that it had to grow to multi-sheets? Can I add a parent sheet and declare my former only sheet as a child?
What about a project that is going to be done across several PC boards, but I want to create a multi-sheet schematic that has net names for connections between the boards via a wiring harness? I will need to create each PC board from a set of sheets. I guess the over all connection would be a 'grand parent' sheet that shows the connections between each parent sheet (which is the top sheet for each board), and the set of child boards fore each parent (pc) board.
I've seen schematics where each board was drawn on the top sheet as a 'part' and the top sheet showed all the connections between boards. Then each board was a set of child schematics, the parent of these was the 'part' shown in the top sheet. How to do something like that?
You might be able to make a single-sheet project a parent by playing games with renaming files. But I'd play it safe and create a new project with its top page as the new 'root page' and then copy the sheet from the original/old project to the new project and then use it as the file in a new sub-sheet.
Multi-boards comes up once in a while on the kicad forums. I am not aware of any viable solution. You might try asking about this in forum.kicad.info/
Until KiCad implements multiple boards in one project then I think the idea of drawing a multi-board connection schematic might have to be its own project.
Why do wires sometimes not snap to the component leads in Schematics?
Not sure what you mean here. The ends of wires always snap to the closest grid point. If they are all over then change your grid to .05" (I'd prefer .1" but there are too many parts in the libraries that have pins on .05" centers.)
@@JohnsBasement I want the wire to snap to the component circle, not the grid. I am trying to connect my components together in schematics.
The custom made symbol is snaping to inbetween the grid points.
@@Berghiker all the library symbols use .1" or .05" centers for the pins. IF you do NOT use a .05" grid in your schematics AND for all of YOUR components too then you are going to have this problem.
Very helpful. Thanks!
@@makespace8483you are most welcome!
Great, helpful video!
Glad it was helpful!
Hey John, what program do you use for circuit simulation? I'm assuming you're using it with Ubuntu...? Can you use the schematic editor from KiCad and export the resulting netlist into the circuit simulation program...? Thx for any help, love the series!
I haven't used circuit similation with kicad. So I can not offer an opinion on doing so.
I'm sure others have. You might ask about it in the various kicad forums.
@@JohnsBasement Wow, a spice app is built right in to Kicad 5.0! Very cool.
These help alott, Thanks so much :D
How can I change the order of multi Hierarchical Sheet, which means change of "Id" no. by manually .
I don't know if you can.
Sheet page numbers are assigned in the order that the 'sheet symbols' are added to your project. Therefore, in theory, you can copy all of the sheet symbols to new ones in the order that you want your pages to be numbered and then delete the original symbols. BUT, if you do this, your part/component reference designators will all change and that will make any PCB that you have been working on into a broken mess. So.. don't try this unless you ONLY have a schematic in your project.
If you want to get creative (and risk completely destroying your project), FIRST, make a backup your project and then try poking around inside the .sch files to see if you can edit the page numbers that are stored within. They are all plain ASCII files, you any text editor can open them. I read somewhere that the page numbers are based on the order that the sheets appear in the .sch file within which they are defined. For example, in an old project I have around I can see a set of these 'stanzas' in my root level page:
$Sheet
S 1750 3300 1750 550
U 5D92F9C9
F0 "CPU3" 50
F1 "CPU3.sch" 50
$EndSheet
I can also see that each of these stanzas are in sheet/page-number order. If I cut & paste the stanzas in a different order (without otherwise altering them in any way) , it APPEARS that I have changed the page numbers on the sheets while not having 'broken' anything.
Beware! I would not bet more than a round of drinks on this method being safe. Nor would I expect it to be stable/viable in future releases of kicad.
@@JohnsBasement Thank you Jhon, the thing which you shared is very helpful for me and my friends.
"creating new sheet in kicad without using Hierarchical Sheet is possible or not..." Because while converting it to the pdf file the root sheet contain all the sub_sheet block (table) in it ,which was created by us. It seems not good in the font page. How can I solve this problem? Could anybody can help me in this problem.
Hierarchical is the only way.
You can spec printing pages 2-n. But then the sheet numbers start at 2.
When i want multisheet & no hierarchy, i put small sheet symbols for pages 2-n at the bottom of my sheet 1 (which is also full of my page-1 schematic.)
You can also put the sheet symbolsoutside of the page borders on your sheet 1. Then they won't print at all.
@@JohnsBasement "Thank you John"
Great job. Thanks for sharing
I am interested in that schematic you showed for the 12VDC power supply. Do you have any tutorials on power supply design? Thanks again!
Not yet. Between plagues and my having started some new hobby projects that have gotten out of hand... I have not had much time to record any new vids.
So, what do you want to know about power supplies?
Good info
Thanks!
You sound almost exactly like AvE. Or he sounds like you.
😂
If you can reproduce it easily , it would be valuable to report the "lost connections / bubbles" stuff to the KiCad bug tracker (bugs.launchpad.net/kicad).
Yeah. I thought about doing so. But first I need to upgrade to 5.1 & test with that. Maybe it is already fixed?
I thought you were already running 5.1. My bad !