kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/13/2015 1:50 AM, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2015 at 10:49:59PM -0600, Joseph Chen wrote:
> 
>> Though you don't approve the change now, I hope you would approve it
>> sometime later soon, like maybe RC2. I am saying this because I
>> believe the fix is crucial for KiCAD to be improved towards a
>> production quality EDA, after I encountered my PCB's near "DEATH"
>> situation.
> 
> I don't think that checking unmatched names is so critical. In fact
> *most* of my labels are simply used to... label nets, not to create a
> connection. That way during routing I can see the signal which need
> particular attention (also it's easier to set netclasses in this way)
> 
> A distraction like a mistyped label is akin to connecting a wire to the
> wrong pin (one time I flipped over an amp symbol... lot's of smoke
> happened :D); no ERC can save you from that.
> 
> The *only* feature useful in the schematic DRC is the 'unconnected pin'
> warning; all the other ones (signal conflicts, power pins and so on) are
> a complete nuisance (at least for mixed signal and analog-heavy boards).
> Even for digital boards a filter inductor on a power pin would give a
> missing power warning :P
> 

When a pin is connected to a wire with a label that doesn't go anywhere,
does the ERC generate an error?  It probably should because technically
this is still an unconnected pin.  This is a more sensible then checking
for unmatched label names for the reasons Lorenzo stated above.