ERC does not find unconnected Power Ports

[David Pearce]

Eeschema bug
Power Ports have a "Pin" like a component symbol, but ERC does not flag if the Power Port is not attached to a wire segment. The consequence is that a Power Port can be placed on a wire and fail to name the net correctly, resulting islands of isolated tracks.
The attached screenshot shows an "orphan" Power Port and an unconnected resistor. The resistor IS detected by ERC

Application: kicad
Version: 4.0.4-stable release build
wxWidgets: Version 3.0.2 (debug,wchar_t,compiler with C++ ABI 1009,GCC 5.2.0,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
Platform: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
Boost version: 1.57.0
         USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
         USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
         KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
         KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
         KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
         USE_FP_LIB_TABLE=HARD_CODED_ON
         BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON

[Gaz (questuk)]

Hi,

I have discussed this on the following forum and its agreed its a fault.

https://forum.kicad.info/t/erc-check-misses-unconnected-5v-and-0v/4385/31

Thanks

Gaz

[Gaz (questuk)]

PS

It also has an example in zip format called TEST on the above website on that page.

Regards

Gaz

[Rene Poeschl (poeschlr)]

There is an inconsistency in deceding what is a wishlist item and what is a bug. The similar bug for hirarchical labels is marked as importance "medium" https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1781725

---

It seems global labels have the same problem. So i think we can make one large bug report that just says: "ERC does not detect any type of unconnected labels"

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

This is wishlist because the discussed failure mode is not applicable anymore. Junctions are added automatically, connecting power pins to wires. The extra check of isolated power pins is nice to have but now the pin will need to be physically separated from the wire for it to occur.

I marked the referenced report higher because it is harder to see when hierarchical labels don't connect to anything at the parent sheet.

[Rene Poeschl (poeschlr)]

Another Related report this time about labels: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1802008

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2038