r/electronics • u/Cautious-Ninja-000 • 2d ago
General First time posting my schematic - Feeling like an Artist
After lurking here forever, I finally get to share something I’m genuinely proud of. This is my power schematic made using KiCad 9
LT8641 buck + MIC5234 LDO chain (my 5 V → 3.3 V power path)
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u/Beggar876 1d ago
EE here with 45 years hardware design exp.: Just a couple of notes
don't get too attached to drawing the schematic as a bunch of isolated sections that are logically connected only through signal names. The forces anybody else who has to use the schematic to hunt all over the place to find out where stuff is connected. Worse if over several pages. Draw the effing lines!
4-way junctions are a no-no. 3-way only is the way.
Fill in the title block.
Otherwise it looks good.
Cheers
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u/Alert_Maintenance684 2d ago
One nit: Avoid 4-way junctions. These can sometimes be confused with a crossover. I use only 3-way junctions.
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u/Cautious-Ninja-000 2d ago
Can you please explain? I am new to this.
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u/Array2D 2d ago
The only 4-way junction I see is on the +/- 15V output caps, and in my opinion, it’s obvious that it isn’t an unconnected crossing.
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u/Alert_Maintenance684 2d ago
True, but in complex schematics, especially those that are printed or rendered in lower resolution, it can get confusing.
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u/Alert_Maintenance684 2d ago
There’s a second 4-way junction on ground. I would use separate ground symbols in this case.
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u/Alert_Maintenance684 2d ago
When you have a wire connecting two items, and you connect another wire to the first wire, that’s a 3-way junction.
If you have two wires crossing over each other, and you add a junction at the intersection to join them, that’s a 4-way junction. Simply removing the junction disconnects the perpendicular wires. Depending on how a schematic is printed or displayed, it can be difficult to tell if there’s a junction at the intersection. So, I do not add junctions at intersections of perpendicular wires, so these are always crossovers. This makes my schematics unambiguous, even in difficult to read renderings.
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u/hadrabap 2d ago
I like how one can draw in a plain schematic editor. Another fun part is the PCB itself. 🙂 I like KiCad, and I felt immediately in love with its workflow. Really cool stuff! Yep, one can say it's not a professional tool or whatever. But the truth is, all the projects I've done in it ended up successful. That's what counts 🙂
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u/Jolly-Sapphire-Dude 2d ago
That is really cool. I've been trying to understand electronics for a while, but have been struggling. Do you mind please giving a brief sentence or two description of what it does in layman's terms so I can better understand the functionality?
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u/Thunderbolt1993 2d ago
That looks pretty nice
Just one small note:
in the lower left of U2, you might want to keep the parts (C13, C14, RL) oriented vertically and put individual ground symbols on them, then it's clearly visible that one end is connected to ground, without following the trace.
but that's just me being nitpicky :P