Simple schematic from nodes file?

[aneng]

Hi.  I'm very much a noob to component level repair and I find it difficult to visualise the connections just by looking at a PCB.  I've learned about nodes and wondered if there was an easy way of generating a simple schematic from a nodes file.  I can look at a PCB and create a text file of nodes quite easily - it's turning that into something that looks like a schematic that's the issue.

If not this way, how else do you create a schematic from a simple PCB please?

[Doctorandus_P]

This is a nice tutorial of reverse-engineering a PCB with KiCad:
https://learn-cnc.com/reverse-engineering-pcbs/

Or a more generic search, which also brigs up instructables and other resources:
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=kicad+pcb+reverse+engineer

I can see two changes that would be very useful for reverse engineering a PCB, and I'm hoping they will someday be included in KiCad.
The first is to have a .jpg image as a background. It should be scalable, and preferable also some simple editing corrections such as reversing parallax and barrel distortion. But making a picture perpendicular from the PCB and from a long distance and using the zoom of your camera is usually good enough, and using a flatbed scanner is also an option of course.

The other tool would be a ratsnest in the schematic drawing program.
Normally in a PCB design suite you first draw a schematic, then put all footprints "random" on a PCB and you sort them out by using the ratsnest lines and other tools.
This can also be made to work the other way around. You place footprints on the PCB on the locations given by the photograph, and you re-trace the copper tracks. This combination creates a netlist. Then you attach schematic symbols to the IC package footprints, and you have all the information to draw ratsnest lines in the schematic.

I am not aware of an EDA suite that can do this all though.
Lots of reverse-enginurding tutorials use generic photo editing programs in their workflow.

[PlainName]

The other tool would be a ratsnest in the schematic drawing program.

Neat idea. I reckon I'd find a use for that even doing forward engineering