[nrclark]

For any Kicad devs reading this thread, are multi-sheet schematics on the roadmap at all?

I work with some Orcad designers who view it as a necessary feature for the style of schematics that they draw. They feel like forced-hierarchical is arbitrary and high friction, but also don't want to throw a complex design onto one giant sheet.

[Futureshocked]

Yes, multi-sheet schematics works. It has since version 5.

[nrclark]

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.

[Futureshocked]

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?

[nrclark]

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.

[Kliment]

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.

[jwr]

I think this has always been present in KiCad? Most of my designs are multi-sheet. I don't care much about the hierarchy, though — I have a top-level "TOC" page, which apart from a description and release notes for all versions contains links to all the sheets.