John, I am listening to this for the first time (4 years after it’s been posted) and I truly thank you for the extra step you took to clarify everything you talked about in this video. Thank You!
You are a true hero explaining the convoluted logic or using hierarchical labels. I figured out most of KiCad on my own, I made first schematic and PCB in my life (and it was a quite complicated one) ready for production without looking anywhere how to do it, but I gave up on understanding the hierarchical sheet thing.
Hay John! I was really struggling with hierarchical "sheets" until I watched this RUclips. Thanks so much for the lesson--I like your honest approach and they way you correct for things that go "wrong" as you proceed.
John, these training videos are so good, I feel they should have come bundled with the Kicad installer itself! "The Missing Manuals", etc.Thank you so much! Very, very well explained, and thoroughly enjoyable to watch, too - you have a knack for keeping things interesting and light-hearted while at the same time being really comprehensive.
They call them sheets because they are quite literally sheets in the engineering sense, as in pages of a schematic! Its just Kicad was written with the intention that you can use a "Sheet" as a whole subassembly, and hence have "pins" linking to that sheet (the box icon) in a higher order assembly (on its own sheet!). Its like making a whole item in the component library, but custom to your project. Since in any good project every sheet will have some sort of connection to each other, there will be no floats, so while not intuitive it's a nice feature once you get used to it.
Would be good for esd protection just link back to a H-label to a sheet and you can pick between which type of ESD protection you want based from which ESD protection sheet you pick.
@@JohnsBasement I have been doing some KiCad projects of late and wanted to say to you yet again this video really helped me. You could benefit others by offering for down load your preamp files so that people could practice this tutorial with out drawing the preamp. Further reinforcing the value of this work methodology. Again thanks so much for demonstrating and explaining how this works.
Thank you for all the tutorials that you have made! I have a question, Can you make a PCB layout of a hierarchical block and have it ready to import into a PCB design. For example a DCDC converter in a hierarchical block that you use on many different product designs so you can also just insert the block in both the schematic and the PCB layout?
You can reuse sheets by specifying the same xxx.sch name for sheet symbols in multiple projects (or in multiple sheets in the same project for that matter.) There is no way (that I know of) to share a PCB fragment on multiple boards.
If I'm dividing a large schematic into smaller units, but not creating 'similar but different' units like your mike preamps, then I don't see any reason not to just use global labels. In this case, I might have started with one huge sheet (say 11x17), and then cut out sections each to fit on an 8x11 sheet, and 'join' them via global labels. I might want to use local labels for power if each 'sheet' section had its own 5v voltage regulator, all of which were fed by a global 12v rail. Then I'd probably have to define my own power symbol for each of the local 5v nets.
It is a judgement call which method to use to split it up. For non-global power rails I often use a regular labeled net (as opposed to a power symbol.)
John, great video instructions thank you. Tried Kicad some years back but rather stuck to Altium until now....wow Kicad has come into it's own now and I need to convert. Quite easy with your series although I find strategy info mostly absent in my upskilling such as...using a large symbol splitting and using varying functions of the symbol over different designs....when the initial symbol is created then I split it into logic groups however say for example everything memory might be used on a single sheet or on different sheets....impossible to tell at symbol creation stage. I found the clue in your hierarchical label video to reference the same source symbol sheet in a few child sheets to reference varying different parts of the symbol...hope that is clear however that kind of strategy tips video series would be invaluable for Kicad adoption...please consider a series of short one idea one tittle video series. Also a one idea one tittle plugin series would help a lot as I see you have some kind of a plugin to view the netlist after generation....curently I generate and then view it in another step with norepad++
To continue your programming analogy a sheet is a class. It's not good practice to copy paste the same content to multiple sheets. A better way to do it is to create two instances of Sheet: MIC1. Then you dont have to redo everything you just did in Sheet: MIC2. If you start doing it like this you create bad habits. A root sheet is a sheet, a child sheet is a sheet. Just an advice.
John, I am listening to this for the first time (4 years after it’s been posted) and I truly thank you for the extra step you took to clarify everything you talked about in this video. Thank You!
You're very welcome!!! I hope it turns out to be time well spent!
You are a true hero explaining the convoluted logic or using hierarchical labels. I figured out most of KiCad on my own, I made first schematic and PCB in my life (and it was a quite complicated one) ready for production without looking anywhere how to do it, but I gave up on understanding the hierarchical sheet thing.
Hay John! I was really struggling with hierarchical "sheets" until I watched this RUclips. Thanks so much for the lesson--I like your honest approach and they way you correct for things that go "wrong" as you proceed.
Hey! Thanks for the kind review!
That was a fantastic demonstration with LOTS of good (and detailed) information that will definitely help me be better at Kicad. Thanks heaps John.
I'm hlad to know I could help!
John, these training videos are so good, I feel they should have come bundled with the Kicad installer itself! "The Missing Manuals", etc.Thank you so much! Very, very well explained, and thoroughly enjoyable to watch, too - you have a knack for keeping things interesting and light-hearted while at the same time being really comprehensive.
Love your style of explaining. To the point! Subbed.
Thank you!
@john's Basement is one of the best electroics channels on youtube!
Thank you! Yours is one of the best comments on youtube!
A brilliant sieries of tutorials. Mnay thanks for all your hard work and inspired teaching method.
You're very welcome!
Efficient and easy/clear to understand. Thanks
Great job. Your explanation is pretty accurate. Thank you!.
You're welcome!
Very nice, i wanted to make my schematics cleaner by using multiple sheets and this tutorial was perfect for learning the ropes
Glad it helped!
Absolutely epic thing, these hierarchical sheets! Thank you for teaching them to me.
Glad I could help!
Great video. So much opportunity for scaling using this method!
Wow, that was immensely useful. Thanks!
Glad to hear it!
Easy to understand explanations ; thanks for this example. It's going to help me .
Most welcome!
This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks.
Glad I could help!
They call them sheets because they are quite literally sheets in the engineering sense, as in pages of a schematic! Its just Kicad was written with the intention that you can use a "Sheet" as a whole subassembly, and hence have "pins" linking to that sheet (the box icon) in a higher order assembly (on its own sheet!). Its like making a whole item in the component library, but custom to your project. Since in any good project every sheet will have some sort of connection to each other, there will be no floats, so while not intuitive it's a nice feature once you get used to it.
Would be good for esd protection just link back to a H-label to a sheet and you can pick between which type of ESD protection you want based from which ESD protection sheet you pick.
Very helpfull tutorials. Thank you!
What wrong with my schematic if mismatch between hierarchical labels and pin sheet
I'm confused. What's a pin sheet?
Thanks for doing these.
You're welcome!
@@JohnsBasement I have been doing some KiCad projects of late and wanted to say to you yet again this video really helped me.
You could benefit others by offering for down load your preamp files so that people could practice this tutorial with out drawing the preamp. Further reinforcing the value of this work methodology.
Again thanks so much for demonstrating and explaining how this works.
Is there a way to share the PCB component placement and copper routing for a page full of parts on the second page full of parts?
Thank you for all the tutorials that you have made! I have a question, Can you make a PCB layout of a hierarchical block and have it ready to import into a PCB design. For example a DCDC converter in a hierarchical block that you use on many different product designs so you can also just insert the block in both the schematic and the PCB layout?
You can reuse sheets by specifying the same xxx.sch name for sheet symbols in multiple projects (or in multiple sheets in the same project for that matter.)
There is no way (that I know of) to share a PCB fragment on multiple boards.
@@JohnsBasement Thanks John, I might see if its something the could add. It would make life a lot faster.
Great!
sounds sheety... really good explanation.
If I'm dividing a large schematic into smaller units, but not creating 'similar but different' units like your mike preamps, then I don't see any reason not to just use global labels. In this case, I might have started with one huge sheet (say 11x17), and then cut out sections each to fit on an 8x11 sheet, and 'join' them via global labels. I might want to use local labels for power if each 'sheet' section had its own 5v voltage regulator, all of which were fed by a global 12v rail. Then I'd probably have to define my own power symbol for each of the local 5v nets.
It is a judgement call which method to use to split it up.
For non-global power rails I often use a regular labeled net (as opposed to a power symbol.)
John, great video instructions thank you. Tried Kicad some years back but rather stuck to Altium until now....wow Kicad has come into it's own now and I need to convert. Quite easy with your series although I find strategy info mostly absent in my upskilling such as...using a large symbol splitting and using varying functions of the symbol over different designs....when the initial symbol is created then I split it into logic groups however say for example everything memory might be used on a single sheet or on different sheets....impossible to tell at symbol creation stage. I found the clue in your hierarchical label video to reference the same source symbol sheet in a few child sheets to reference varying different parts of the symbol...hope that is clear however that kind of strategy tips video series would be invaluable for Kicad adoption...please consider a series of short one idea one tittle video series.
Also a one idea one tittle plugin series would help a lot as I see you have some kind of a plugin to view the netlist after generation....curently I generate and then view it in another step with norepad++
Thanks for the positive review!
The series of shorts is a good idea. If only there were 48 hours in a day. :-/
To continue your programming analogy a sheet is a class. It's not good practice to copy paste the same content to multiple sheets. A better way to do it is to create two instances of Sheet: MIC1. Then you dont have to redo everything you just did in Sheet: MIC2. If you start doing it like this you create bad habits. A root sheet is a sheet, a child sheet is a sheet. Just an advice.
Excellent
Thanks!
This series is getting REALLY good now. Do you have Patreon or some other way to thank you for all this effort?
If you are still interested, I finally got one set up here: www.patreon.com/johnsbasement
Thanks.