Place Footprints "Schematic hierarchy too shallow"

[matthewlai]

I am trying to use Place Footprints to do placement by reference, but I'm getting a "Schematic hierarchy too shallow" error. The schematics has been saved (I exited and reopened KiCad to confirm).

I have one root sheet with one subsheet, and I looked at the code. It looks like find_all_sch_files() tries to recursively load all subsheets, and returns the error if there is 0 or 1 subsheets not including the root sheet (it doesn't look like the root sheet is ever added to the dict?)

In my case I have a root sheet with one $Sheet ... $EndSheet section, that links to my subsheet, which seems reasonable.

But the script is checking for "if len(self.dict_of_sheets) <= 1:". What is it expecting?

Thanks!

[MitjaNemec]

Hi, if you want to place by sheet then you need to have at least two sheets on the same level.

The plugin expects the len(self.dict_of_sheets) to be at least 2 or bigger. (if you want to place by sheet then footprint from e.g. sheet #1 will serve as anchor and footprint from sheet #2 will be placed

What exactly are you trying to do?

[matthewlai]

Thanks. It makes sense that there needs to be two sheets for place by sheet, but I was trying to do place by reference.

I had one sheet with 16 LEDs, and I wanted to place 15 of them relative to the first one.

[MitjaNemec]

I am the first one to admit that plugins lack documentation and it is also possible that some names (e.g. place by sheet) might be chosen better. So all sugestions are welcome

[matthewlai]

But I was trying to do place by reference not place by sheet. Why was it checking for 2 sheet in that case?

[MitjaNemec]

If you can reproduce it, can you attach the place_footprints.log file which should be in the project folder.

[swilson]

I get the same thing when trying to place by reference. Here is all my log shows:

03-23 10:59:24 place_footprints.action_place_footprints 414:Plugin executed on: 'darwin' 03-23 10:59:24 place_footprints.action_place_footprints 415:Plugin executed with python version: '2.7.16 (default, Dec 23 2020, 16:11:24) \n[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 10.0.1 (clang-1001.0.46.4)]' 03-23 10:59:24 place_footprints.action_place_footprints 416:KiCad build version: (5.1.9-0-10_14) 03-23 10:59:24 place_footprints.action_place_footprints 417:Place footprints plugin version: 54 started 03-23 10:59:25 place_footprints.place_footprints 213:getting project hierarchy from schematics 03-23 10:59:25 place_footprints.place_footprints 219:getting project hierarchy from schematics

[swilson]

Removing the check fixes the issue: https://github.com/swilson/Kicad_action_plugins/commit/672094d84edf187224ea3a845c75a21dfb9f698c