Circuitikz: connection of nodes

Question

I'm using the circuitikz library to draw some circuits. To connect two nodes with a square angle, there is the possibility to use |-, as in the MWE below for the connection of (a) with (b). However, sometimes I don't like the way circuitikz connects the nodes (e.g. it sometimes draws line overlapping with other lines in large circuits), so in some cases I'd like to specify the coordinates where the square angles are inserted (e.g. sometimes I'd like to have two right angles as in MWE 2) or I want to insert a circle at a particular node and so on.

In the MWE, node (a) is connected with nodes (b), (c), (d) and (e).

• The connection with (b) is fine.
• For the connection with (c), I've inserted a circle, and the line after the circle doesn't start immediately at the circle but with some horizontal space inbetween.
• Same problem with node (d), but without the circle.
• Finally, I wanted to connect (a) with (e) by going further up (to (0,5)) and then from there to the right and down to (e). However, this isn't working properly either.

Any ideas how I can solve at least some of these problems?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}
\usepackage[european]{circuitikz}

\begin{document}

\begin{circuitikz} \draw

(0,0) node (a){a}
(1,1) node (b) {b}
(2,2) node (c) {c}
(3,3) node (d) {d}
(3,4) node (e) {e}

(0,2) node (crossa) {}
(0,3) node (crossa2) {}
(0,5) node (crossa3) {}

(a) |- (b)
(a) to[short, -*] (crossa)
(crossa) -- (c)
(a) -- (crossa2) |- (d)
(a) -- (crossa3) |- (e)

;\end{circuitikz}
\end{document}