Schematic Viewer
Prism opens KiCad and Altium schematic sheets natively, so neither tool has to be installed to read a design.
| Extension | Opens as |
|---|---|
.kicad_sch | Schematic viewer — KiCad sheet |
.SchDoc | Schematic viewer — Altium sheet |
The sheet draws with its own border and title block — a KiCad sheet gets KiCad's default block, an Altium sheet keeps its template's — and re-reads itself when the file changes on disk. A re-read that fails keeps the sheet you were looking at and the toolbar reads Reload failed, rather than emptying the tab.
The toolbar carries zoom-out and zoom-in buttons, the current percentage, Fit to window, and 1:1. With a schematic tab in front, ⌘= and ⌘- zoom and ⌘0 fits the sheet.
Moving around
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Wheel | Zooms about the cursor |
| Right or middle drag | Pans |
| Left click | Selects |
| Double-click sheet symbol | Opens the sheet below it |
| Double-click elsewhere | Toggles between fit and 1:1 |
Pan is on the right and middle buttons so the left one is free for selection.
Selecting parts and nets
Click a part, or a wire or label, and it lights up over the sheet — a part with
its pins, a net with its wires, labels and pins. The toolbar names what you
picked: a part as U1 · 74HC00 · 14 pins, a net as its name followed by the
pins on it as reference.pin, with power symbols left out. A net with no name
of its own reads Unnamed net.
Nets are worked out from the geometry of the sheet you have open: wires join where their ends meet or at a junction, a pin or label joins the wire it sits on, and same-named labels and power pins join, wherever they are on the sheet. Connections that leave the sheet — hierarchical ports, global names, buses — are not resolved yet, so a net that continues elsewhere lights up only here.
From the agent
| Tool | Use |
|---|---|
prism_schematic_viewer_state | The open sheet and the current selection |
prism_schematic_viewer_find | Parts and nets on the sheet, with each net's pins |
prism_schematic_viewer_select | Selects a part or net and frames it so you can see it |
Which nets reach U3, and what else is on the one carrying the reset?Ask about a sheet and the agent reads it rather than asking you to describe it, and selects what it is talking about so the answer is on screen.