Electronic – KiCad question: how to assign pins to pads when the footprint and device have different numbers of pins

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I have a vacuum tube that has 9 pins. 3 of the pins are heaters and aren't connected to the PCB I'm designing, meaning only 6 pins need to be connected to the PCB. The Tube itself sits in a panel mounted socket that's not part of the PCB.

I'd like to use a 6 position screw terminal block on the PCB to run wires to the tube socket.

I assigned a 6 position screw terminal block footprint to the tube in the schematic, but only 3 of the pins are showing as being connected in the PCB editor.

How do I assign the tube pins 6,7,8 to the footprint pins 4,5,6?

EDIT

Adding some pictures:

So here is Unit A and Unit B of the tube on my schematic. Notice I only use pins 1,2,3 and 6,7,8. I actually lied in my first post, pins 2 and 7 aren't connected to the PCB either, so really I only need a 4 position terminal block, but the question still is the same…

enter image description here

I assigned a 6 pin terminal block as the footprint. In the PCB editor this is what I see. Instead, I want all the pins of the terminal block being used:

enter image description here

Thank you!!

Best Answer

You need to design either:

  • your own footprint with the pin numbers corresponding to the existing tube symbol,
  • or your own library symbol for the tube, with the pin numbers corresponding to the existing footprint.

This means create your own footprint library, or your own schematic component library. That's a process with lots of clicks, but not actually difficult (you can easily create new footprints/parts from existing ones).

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