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Schematic view

The circuit on your breadboard drawn as a schematic beside it, with standard symbols, kept up to date as you build.

Which plans

The Schematic view is part of Pro, like the exports: Pro, every paid plan and the 14-day Pro trial have all of it, and so do students in a class and teachers during the class trial. On Free, Schematic in the More menu carries a small Pro tag. It still opens and shows your own circuit's schematic, clearly enough to read, pan and zoom, with a button to try Pro (or to sign in, when you are signed out). The Export menu lists every format with a lock, and each one opens the Pro offer.

Opening it

Press the round More button on the canvas toolbar, then Schematic. On a computer the schematic opens beside the breadboard, and the × in its corner closes it. On a phone it takes the canvas, with Breadboard and Schematic tabs along the top to switch between the two, and it opens with the whole sheet in view, between those tabs and the toolbar at the bottom.

What it shows

  • The board in the middle, as a box with its pin names. Only the pins something is wired to are drawn, and a line under the box says how many were left off.
  • Every other part, next to the board pin it connects to. A part wired through another one sits further out, so D13, a resistor, an LED and ground read left to right.
  • Standard symbols for resistors, capacitors (electrolytics with their + side), LEDs, diodes, pushbuttons, switches, potentiometers, NPN and PNP transistors, MOSFETs, buzzers, motors and batteries. Modules and chips are labeled boxes with their pin names.
  • Power and ground as symbols on each pin, named after the board pin they come from (5V, 3V3, GND), instead of wires running all over the sheet.
  • Net labels. When a wire would cross another wire or a part, or a net joins more than four pins, each pin gets a small flag with the net's name instead. Pins with the same name are connected. A net on a board pin is named after it (D13, A4); a net on a chip or module pin is named after that pin (u2.Q3 is pin Q3 of u2); the rest are N1, N2 and so on, numbered top to bottom as you read the sheet.

What counts as connected is exactly what the simulator uses: a part on a breadboard row is connected to everything else on that row.

Moving around

Drag to pan, and use the mouse wheel or a two-finger pinch to zoom, as on the breadboard. The Fit button (four corners) brings the whole sheet back into view. On a phone, the words on the sheet grow a little as you zoom out, so the names stay readable when the whole sheet is in view; pinch in to read every pin.

Click a part in the schematic and it is selected on the breadboard, with its settings in the properties panel. A part you select on the breadboard is highlighted in the schematic.

Editing

Change the circuit on the breadboard and the schematic redraws a moment later. You can also edit in the schematic itself:

  • Move a symbol. Drag it. It stays where you put it, saved with the project, and Undo puts it back. Parts you add later are still placed for you.
  • Wire two pins. Drag from one pin to another. A real wire is added to the circuit, so it also shows on the breadboard between the same two pins and runs in the simulation.
  • Delete. Click a part and press Delete to remove it, the same as on the breadboard. Click a wire to select its net, and Delete removes the wires that run straight from pin to pin on it. A connection made by a breadboard row is changed on the breadboard.

While the pointer is on the schematic, the hint line at the bottom of the canvas lists these.

Tidy

The Tidy button (lines falling into rows) lays the whole sheet out again: symbols you dragged go back where Mokxi places them, and the sheet fits the view. Undo brings your arrangement back.

Exporting and printing

The Export button (an arrow pointing down) has:

  • PNG image and SVG file: the schematic on white paper with a title block under it (the project's name, the date and mokxi.com). The PNG is high resolution, four pixels to every grid step, as far as the size limit allows.
  • Print or PDF, on Letter or A4: the browser's print dialog, where Save as PDF makes a PDF. Each page is landscape with a title block that says which sheet it is. A sheet too big to read on one page is spread over several, never printing its words smaller than about 1.8 mm; neighboring pages share a strip 12 mm wide, and each edge says which sheet continues there, so you can lay them side by side.
  • KiCad schematic (.kicad_sch, in KiCad 8's format, which KiCad 8 and later open) and KiCad netlist (.net), to carry on to a printed circuit board. Resistors, capacitors, LEDs, diodes, transistors, switches and the rest use KiCad's standard library symbols and pin numbers; boards, modules and chips are boxes with their real pin names. Every part keeps its value, and every connection is a net label or a power symbol on its pin. In KiCad, open the schematic, assign footprints, then update the PCB from it (or import the netlist into the PCB editor). The steps, and the errors KiCad shows on the way, are in Export a circuit to a KiCad schematic.

The build guide (Export, then Build guide (PDF)) has the schematic too, as a full page before the wiring steps.

Big projects

A project with many parts, such as an LED cube or a robot with eight servos, is folded into columns so the sheet keeps about the shape of your screen. Several small parts that hang off one part, like the four LEDs on each column of an LED cube, sit side by side in a row. Connections that would run across the sheet become net labels instead, and no label, power symbol or part is drawn on top of another.

Chips you make yourself and custom chips are boxes with their own pin names.