Hi everyone,
is there any way how to auto arrange components in kicad because it’s really exhausting doing that manually especially when you have hundreds of them.
When computers get good at auto placement, pcb designers will be obsolete
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Spreading is very useful
Placement less so unless you have spent a lot of effort “weighting” tracks.
I remember the days of schematic driven Xilinx fpga tools defining which were the critical nets before the genetic algorithm ran. Even then there was no way of indicating a segment of a net was critical, not the whole thing
i cant’t find that option in my kicad, i’m using 4.0.2 version of software. is there anything else i should do to reach to that point.
i meant the global movement
You need Default View mode for this, it is missing in OpenGL View
how do i fix this one?
ok, found it. thanks guys. i switched to default view mode, thanks a lot.
unfortunately many features are missing in OpenGL…
this is messy thing when you have to deal with too many components
I switch modes many times in a simple project. We are nowhere near ready to drop Default View yet 
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For a complex project, you should divide your circuit into blocks and plan the placement before even opening Pcbnew. It is your skill at doing this that makes a layout good or bad. Actual routing with a good placement can be done by Freerouting
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It takes too many space even with smd components.
Which takes me to a wishlist thought:
It would be nice if the “Assign Component Footprints” step could generate a total area used and a percentage of board area used.
Then you would need to have a board defined before you draw your schematic…?!
This would be at what was the cvpcb stage.
Obviously percentage would only be available if there was an outline in Edgecuts.
I wonder what is a typical maximum, bga packages usually occupy both sides thanks to the via density
It seems like a useful feature, but how is component area defined? Perhaps by courtyard area?
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