Qualify Panel
The Qualify panel is where a part's connection points are managed: the port groups it declares, what each group is for, the points in them, and the two reports that say whether the part's pins, pads and points agree.
It is a dock tab titled Qualify, and it is the same panel on three surfaces — the
Symbol editor, the Pads editor and the
3D model. Select a point here and press Symbol, Pads or 3D to land on that
surface with the point's pin, pad or geometry selected (see Look at it in).
When it is on screen
Exactly while the part declares at least one port group, even one with no points yet. No
workbench claims it, so switching workbench does not hide it. A part with no ports block is
not offered an empty panel, and the pane comes forward by itself when a part declares its
first group. That first group comes from one of four places:
- the Declare connection point button in the Wire harness workbench, which exists for this and is offered only while the part declares none;
- importing a KiCad symbol, whose pins arrive as a
Pinsgroup; - adding a pin in the Symbol editor, which mints the point it binds to;
- writing the block by hand.
Removing the last group closes the pane again, and says so.
Groups
The panel's header carries Add group, which declares another port group on the part (a
second connector, or a port with a different purpose), and the summary N groups | M points.
One framed block per port group:
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Name | The group name — the first half of every address in it (J1 in J1.VCC). :, . and / are refused by the model. |
| Purpose | What kind of connection these points are: pcb, wiring, piping. Free-form in the document — a value it already carries that is none of the three is offered beside them rather than rewritten. |
| unit | The symbol unit whose pins bind into this group, 1-based. Empty binds no pins, which is right for the piping port of a valve whose symbol is only its pressure sensor — unless this is the part's only group, when it takes unit 1. |
| Remove the group, its points, and the pins bound to them. |
A part may declare several groups with different purposes. One symbol unit maps to one port
group, which lets two identical connectors on one part both have a pin 1.
Points
One row per connection point: selects it, the text field is its name, removes it. Add point appends one at the part origin, named with the first free number.
Selecting a point lights it up on the surface you are on — its pin, its pad, or its geometry in 3D — and opens its fields below. In 3D only a point the last rebuild resolved can light up; one you have just typed in has no geometry yet.
The name is the identity. The symbol pin of that name in this group's unit binds to it, and the pad of that number follows a rename — all in one undo step.
The selected point's fields
The fields sit under the point's row in four sections, in the order you set them: seat it, nudge it, say how the wire leaves, and (in an assembly) say whose point it really is.
| Section | Field | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Seated on | Point | Geometry the point sits on: a face, an edge, a circle's centre, a vertex, a datum frame. picks it in the 3D view (greyed from an eCAD editor, which has no faces); unseats it. Empty places the point by the offset alone. |
| Seated on | Direction | Geometry it faces along: a face's normal, a bore's axis, an edge, a datum frame. Empty takes the direction the point reference implies, or +X. and as for Point. |
| Placement | Offset | Where the point sits, in millimetres — from the part origin when nothing seats it, otherwise relative to its seat (x along the direction the reference gives). A component that is not a number is kept as an expression, exactly as the block carries it. |
| Placement | Angle | The rotation, in degrees, applied to +X (or, when seated, to the seat's own axes) to get the direction a wire leaves along. |
| Wire | Extension | The straight run a wire keeps before it may bend. A spline anchor attached here takes it as its forward / backward distance. |
| Wire | Drawn | How long the point's line is drawn. |
| Wire | Leaves the other way | Flip the direction a wire leaves along, without disturbing the seat. |
| Assembly | Maps to | Only in a document with components: the descendant point this one is, by address (ACOMP2:J5.VCC). The mapped point takes the target's resolved placement, so the interface follows the child — and while it is set this is the point's only field: no seat, no offset, no handles. Clear it to place the point here instead. |
A line under Seated on says how the point is seated, and one under Placement says whether the 3D view's move / rotate handles are on it (a drag writes the offset).
Look at it in
With a point selected, three buttons carry it to another surface. The button for the surface you are already on is greyed.
- Symbol — opens the schematic symbol with this point's pin selected.
- Pads — opens the footprint with this point's pad selected.
- 3D — selects the point's geometry in the model. From an eCAD editor this switches to the Wire harness workbench; from a workbench that already draws the model it only selects.
It works the other way round too: picking a pin in the Symbol editor, or a pad in the Pads editor, selects the connection point of that name here.
Pins and points
For a part with no symbol it reads this part has no symbol, so its points bind to no pins. Otherwise it counts the pairs and then lists, in words, everything that does not pair:
- a pin with no label, and two pins of one unit sharing one;
- a pin whose unit's group has no point of that name, and a point of a bound group that no pin names;
- two points of one group sharing a name, which no pin could tell apart;
- a numbered pad matching no pin;
- the unit disagreements: a unit with no group at all (its pins bind to nothing), a
symbolUnitpast the symbol's unit count, and two groups claiming one unit.
A line reading not carried to the pins is a hold, not a property of the document: the keystroke you just typed could not be carried to the pins (it would have made two pins share a label), but your edit stands. It clears itself.
Ports
From the last rebuild — connection points are resolved after the whole part is built, so this is where a reference that resolved to nothing or a refused name shows up. It counts the resolved points, says whether this document is an encapsulation boundary (a board: a parent sees only what the board itself declares) or transparent (an enclosure: a parent sees the parts inside it too), lists the problems, and then lists every point that maps down, with its target.
It reads the model has not run yet before the first rebuild.