Nice, I didn't realize. All the tutorials and stuff out there all show a hierarchical schematic as the only way to get multi-sheet, instead of just a flat schematic with some stuff on one page and some stuff on another. I know the UI has changed a lot over the years.
There's no hierarchy to the schematic. Pages are inserted/deleted in a freeform way, the same as you'd do with a Word document. Reference designators are in a global namespace, and so are net names.
It feels like it's a pretty common drafting style, at least in my corner of the world. I've worked at two companies that use this style, and I also see it a fair amount on reference-designs like the linked example.
When I need this sort of schematic in Kicad I have the top-level be a "table of contents" page and everything else is below that. Works great, you can insert/delete pages at will and also you have a nice place to put docs about what is on which page. You then need to use global labels instead of hierarchical labels to link stuff together of course.
Comments
Yes, multi-sheet schematics works. It has since version 5.
Nice, I didn't realize. All the tutorials and stuff out there all show a hierarchical schematic as the only way to get multi-sheet, instead of just a flat schematic with some stuff on one page and some stuff on another. I know the UI has changed a lot over the years.
Oh, sorry, I may have mislead you by mistake.
KiCad's multi-sheet schematic is hierarchical. There is one root sheet and beyond that the structure is flexible.
Do you have an example multi-sheet schematic as you'd like to be able to have in KiCad?
Sure thing. I can't share any of my employer's schematics, but here's one that's drafted in a similar style:
https://digilent.com/reference/_media/reference/programmable...
There's no hierarchy to the schematic. Pages are inserted/deleted in a freeform way, the same as you'd do with a Word document. Reference designators are in a global namespace, and so are net names.
It feels like it's a pretty common drafting style, at least in my corner of the world. I've worked at two companies that use this style, and I also see it a fair amount on reference-designs like the linked example.
When I need this sort of schematic in Kicad I have the top-level be a "table of contents" page and everything else is below that. Works great, you can insert/delete pages at will and also you have a nice place to put docs about what is on which page. You then need to use global labels instead of hierarchical labels to link stuff together of course.