I have encountered a problem with naming nets that has been driving me a bit crazy because I haven’t been able to understand what is happening, but I recently found how to reproduce it. I have a design that is using two ground nets and two supply nets ( GND A, GND B, +5A, and +5B). I used two port symbols, GND and VRail. I pasted two instances of each on my Schematic and edit them to create two unique grounds and supply rails by editing the four of them giving each a separate Value names referenced above. From what I had read in an older forum post, once I start making connections to the other symbols in my circuit the nets will inherit the Netname from the Value of each of the 4 Port symbols. This worked as expected at first. I was able to add more components and when I place additional Power and Ground symbols by copying and pasting the four original symbols and added a connections, each new wire became part of the appropriate net. The problem occurred after I saved and closed the project and then reopened it a short time later. All the net connections made prior to the last Save were all still correct. However, when I made another copy of any of the Port symbols, (I’ll use GND A as the example) and then connected another component to that new symbol, the rest of the GND A net that was created before the Save did not highlight to show that the new connection was part of the net. The odd thing was that the new connection had the same Netname as the original net, but it was displaying as if it was separate. If I clicked anywhere on the GND A net that had been created before the Save, all the wires highlighted, except for the new one. When I clicked on the new wire, it was the only wire that highlighted despite the Net Properties window indicating that it was the same Netname. Has anyone else seen this problem?
Hi @jlwall29,
Thank you so much for your detailed explanation. I have been able to replicate the issue and have communicated the bug to our developers. We will work on the issue as soon as possible.
Curtis Johnson
Hello Curtis, Thanks for the update. I’m glad to see that someone else can reproduce this odd behavior. I was concerned that I was doing something really wrong. I have tried a few other things to see if I could find a workaround, but nothing I’ve tried works.
One thing was to bring in a new port symbol for a ground and give it a new name (GND X), connect it in the circuit and then try to rename it to one of the existing grounds to merge the nets. This creates real havoc because after typing the exitsing Netname (GND A) in the Net Properties Name box and then the Tab, I do get a warning message asking if I really want to connect the nets which is good. The problem is that the program has selected some other net randomly instead of the existing GND A net. and if I continue then the random net becomes part of the GND A net, but is is some other point in the circuit and not a ground. I had done this a few times earlier without realizing what was happening and my circuit nets got completely messed up.
For now, the only work around that I can find that works reliably is to completely delete all the connections to the all the Power Rails and GND A and GND B Ports and reconnect everything after placing the new copies of the Port Symbols that I need. It’s tedious, and has to be done after each time I Save and Reopen any project, but for now seems to work consistently. I hope that your developers can fix this issue a soon as possible. Thanks for your help.