dangling-endpoint

Remedy ¶

Extend the wire to the pin, junction, or label it was meant to reach, or delete it. A wire that ends in space is never what the author intended.

What it means ¶

A schematic wire ends on empty space, with no pin, no junction dot, no label, and no other wire endpoint at that point. The author drew a connection and stopped a hair short, so the wire connects nothing.

Why engineers want it ¶

A .kicad_sch (and xschem/gEDA) stores connectivity as geometry, so two things connect only when their points coincide. A wire dropped a grid step away from a pin looks connected on screen but is not. This is the geometric sibling of single-pin-net. single-pin-net catches a net wired to one pin, and this rule catches a wire wired to zero. That link never became a net at all, so no net-level rule can see it.

Impact ¶

The author meant to make a connection, and it is missing. Nothing downstream reveals it, because the wire produced no net. KiCad’s ERC, like most, ships a dangling-end check for this reason.

Scope note ¶

The rule reports an endpoint on nothing, and only that. wire-no-junction (WS1-012) reports the disguised sibling, a wire end that touches another wire’s body mid-span with no junction dot.

Query structure ¶

the reader computes the dangling endpoints from wire geometry; the rule reports them.

select E in dangling_endpoints

Reads: wire.endpoint, wire.junction. Tier P.