First off, I know that reverse engineering guitar effects pedals is far from a KiCad priority, and that my rants here will likely
never be seen by any of the KiCad development team, but here we go.
When I'm tracing a pedal, especially a complex / unfamiliar circuit, the first draft of the schematic might be a total clusterf**k. If it's a Tubescreamer, sure, I can usually follow the signal path, but if it's something more complex like a BBD circuit, ring modulator, etc not so much.
Sections of the schematic might be drawn upside down, backwards, and in no way sequential in terms of the signal flow.
I know this component connects to that component, but initially I don't know if it's a feedback resistor, series RC filter, pull-up / pull-down resistor, all I know (or care about) at that point is the connections between them. Because of nets like VREF and VCC I might have power supply components drawn near the input buffer, the VREF voltage divider might be split up across the entire schematic, etc.
Once the circuit is fully traced I go back and rearrange/reorganize everything into a logical and legible schematic. During this process of rearranging I
surely wouldn't notice if some unwanted rogue connections were made on my behalf without any notice, so I'm almost certainly going to end up with an incorrect schematic. Under no circumstances do I want my EDA software's Artificial Unintelligence "features" screwing with the connections I've drawn.
Tell me with a straight face you would notice this behavior while working with something like one of these VFE schematics....
(This is
not my trace or drawing, so if Peter would like for me to remove it just say the word)
Here's an even simpler (and more common) situation... splitting a long schematic to fit on the page. I just want to grab the right half of this schematic and drag it down below the left half. I know, I can drag it out, add nodes, reposition, drag it down, add some more nodes, reposition, and eventually get the desired result.... but it
should not be this difficult to simply grab a handful of components and drag them lower on the page without ending up with a mangled schematic.
View attachment 2024-04-02 07-49-37.mp4
All we need is a little checkbox in Preferences called "Disable autoconnecting wires at junction points" ...
If KiCad would do this I would be 100% all in. Hell I'm willing to donate a reasonable amount to have this request bumped in priority... it'd be worth it to me in the long run.
gitlab.com
