Schematic Sheet interconnect

[Harvs]

I'm trying to understand the best way of doing a multi-sheet design as it gets quite large.

From my understanding, there's two ways in Altium; Flat or Hierarchical.

Reading online it seems everyone is saying that Hierarchical is the only way to go, and indeed from what I've done I don't believe you can do Repeat symbols without it (at least it didn't work for me.)

But then I look at the Fedevel OpenRex board, and it's clearly a flat design.

While I can see the virtues of a Hierarchical approach, the actual sheet symbol interconnect seems to get very complicated when you have say 10+ sheets with each sheet connecting to more than one other sheet.  Or am I missing something...

[T3sl4co1l]

Flat is perfectly fine when you're not repeating sheets, and the interconnection is more general than tree-like.

In a flat design, you can use Port symbols, or use Off-Sheet Connectors.  Wires named with the same Net Label will also be connected, but you should try to avoid that because it leads down the slippery slope of graphical netlisting*.

*I don't know if anyone calls it this, but consider: a netlist is a plain-text representation, naming every pin of every component, and which nets those pins go to.  Utterly useless for seeing how a design is connected up.  Now consider a schematic design, where components are placed wherever, and each pin has a net name on it, no wires needed...

Tim

[Harvs]

Flat has certainly worked for me with a large design recently, however is there a way to repeat sheets with a flat design?  Or does that mean you have to go Hierarchical?

[Someone]

*I don't know if anyone calls it this, but consider: a netlist is a plain-text representation, naming every pin of every component, and which nets those pins go to.  Utterly useless for seeing how a design is connected up.  Now consider a schematic design, where components are placed wherever, and each pin has a net name on it, no wires needed...

You'd think that would never happen and then...
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/overcomplicated-audiophool-dac-design-review/?all