KiCad create and understand netlist

Question

I made a schematic in KiCad with hierarchical layout. I'd like to check if the busses are connected the way I want. In this context I often read something about the netlist. So my question is, how do I generate a netlist and what does it tell me about the connections?

Answer 1

To generate a netlist, open Eeschema and click on the netlist button in the toolbar.

This will open the netlist dialog:

You want to generate the default pcbnew format (Kicad's internal netlist format).

Then open the resulting file in a text editor. You will find a section that starts with (nets

In this file, notice first that each (Net is listed with a (code) and a (name). After this, each pin for each component is listed that is connected to the named net. To check whether your bus connections are correct, you should find the two pins you want to connect and verify that they are in the same net.

You can also do this using pcbnew after you have imported the netlist and done some initial layout. But the text-file method described above should work for you before you get to that step.