Really you need to have a reuse at the schematic level before you can expect any intelligent behaviour in the pcb tool.

I've done multi channel designs with hierarchical schematics before... The rename just becomes X1/R1 -> X2/R1 etc...

My rename plugin might still be floating about somewhere "sedrename"... Now we've got more plugins committed with the main repository, it might be fun to dig that one out and include it too... Was very handy when your transformation between channels can be expressed as a regex.

The main downside with heirarchical refdes is the silkscreen and board fab house. They HATED IT. Couldn't cope with the long heirarchical refdes, didn't WANT to cope with the patch I applied to just put the last heirarchical part on the silk by each part, but then drew boxes manually with module designations.

In the end, I used pcb's renumber feature to assign completely new refdes on the board, but instead of back annotating (impossible as we stand, with heirarchical schematics), I added a quick kludgy patch to read back in the rename file, so pcb could map between the gnetlist produced heirarchical netlist, and the flat refdes on the board.

Made debugging extra fun, having to manually indirect from heirarchical schematic refdes to on board refdes, but at least it didn't upset the board assembly fab!

I suppose I could also have post proceed out a flattened set of schematics with the renamed refdes if that became useful.

On 19 Jan 2016 14:51, "M. J. Everitt (m DOT j DOT everitt AT iee DOT org) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:

On 19/01/16 13:58, Nicklas Karlsson (nicklas DOT karlsson17 AT gmail DOT com) [via
geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
>>> I tested and as far as I understand it works like this:
>>> x is old refdes number
>>> n increase with this value
>>> Rx --> Rx+n
>>>
>>> I have subsheets and numbers look like this:
>>> x is old refdes number
>>> n increase with this value
>>> want this S2/S1/Rx --> S2/S1+n/Rx
>>> but get this S2/S1/Rx --> S2/S1+n/Rx
>>> and the need is to change subsheet number and use this for another channel.
>>>
>>> For rename to work reasonable well there must be an integer difference between refdeses for different channels. Default for subsheet is Sn/Sn/Rx there where are two level of hierachy but it use quite a lot of space. To add an integer value to refdes use less space. I could add some kind of wild card so that both changing subsheet and adding an integer value to current subsheet works?
>>>
>>> I also add comment then this is used. Sometimes layout data need to be reused for several channels and in such case it is possible to simply select the layout, copy, rename refdeses and paste. Then doing a multi channel copy and paste really speed up design work.
>>>
>> For this purpose, if you have a schematic, I just use "Autonumber
>> attributes" in gschem ...
> Well gschem is not a problem. If you have done the layout of one channel for example a half bridge in a three phase circuit it is possiblo to copy and paste this layout including lines for copper traces but to get connections right refdeses must be changed.
>
> To copy layout for one a channel in pcb is really powerful yet simple to understand. Ideally somewhere in the future I think selector to select which subcircuit currently is worked on for this purpose would be an improvement but simple copy is essentially already there.
>
> Nicklas Karlsson
I can see your dilemma. Perhaps the best way to handle this (as I've
seen in other apps) is simply to add a '_copy' suffix to the refdes when
you paste it, and then handle renaming from there. It's a difficult
case, I can see what you'd like to do .. but in practise I think there's
a lot of code required to figure out your netlisting mix/match .. the
software has no way of knowing where your 'new' circuit has come from,
or what you want to 'assign' it to in an existing netlist/schematic, so
it would have to be a very simple rename rule.

MJE