Bug when moving a pad

Hello!
I’m not sure it’s a bug, but at least it looks like a bug.
I have grounded hole pads in my design. I wanted to move one accurately, so I pressed the Edit command (E) to set its coordinates. The result is as follows, the pad itself moved, but the outline (whatever it is, the blue and white circles) didn’t.

Pad

Am I missing something or is it a bug?
The funny thing is that the mouse moves it fine. And there are 4 pads. The other pads move fine. I didn’t do anything fancy, I just got one from the menus in the schematic, and copied it 3 times.
Now if I use the mouse to select it as a group (with surrounding rectangle), then it works fine. Is there anything special about these blue and white circles?

Thanks,

Pascal

I’m pretty sure you are trying to move a single pad footprint. That outline is not part of the pad so it doesn’t move. Move the footprint instead.

I am assuming your pad is part of the footprint that describes the outline as well.

In that case the default behavior (version 5.1) should be that it is not possible to move pads separately from the footprint. there is however a flag in the footprint properties that controls this behavior.

Make sure it is set to Lock Pads
fp_prop

Hello!
Thanks for your reply.
I’m not sure of what exactly you are telling me by “That outline is not part of the pad”, but what I did is choosing a pad in the schematic software, then assigning a footprint from the footprint library. I didn’t draw anything (the blue and white lines) outside of the pad itself, so I assumed its’ a single footprint. Usually when I use a MSOP8, for instance, its outline moves with the pads, so I was expecting the pad to move as a whole.
Pascal

@roboya
Yes, that footprint is a TH pad + fabrication layer circle + courtyard circle. When you made your edit you moved just the pad but the footprint stayed where it was so the circles didn’t move.
Basically before pressing ‘E’ make sure you have the footprint selected and not just it’s pad. Then you will move the footprint. You can tell what is selected by the highlights, when footprint is selected those outlines will be highlighted too. Also the edit dialog will state “Pad properties” vs “Footprint properties”.

@Rene_Poschl
You can still move pads through edit dialog even when they are locked.

Hello!
Thanks for your reply. I got it. So the problem I have is that with a single click, it can select either the pad or the whole footprint. Do you know what could be the condition to select all with a single click? After all, I don’t think anybody would ever be interested in moving the pad and not the courtyard. Or is this a bug?
I have verified that the pads are locked.

I just verified that depending on where I click, I can select either the pad only, or the whole footprint. But this latter is quite tricky, I have to click on the blue circle, therefore I need the zoom to be quite large.

Thanks,

Pascal

Edit: I have also verified for other footprints that it’s possible to select a single pad. See picture. From this, it’s possible to use the editor to move one pad, and not the rest of the chip. When using M command to move, it automatically selects the whole chip. Now for my own understanding, what is the point of modifying one pin of a chip, or to move the pad and not its outline. Is this a bug, or am I missing something?
I can understand that in some extremely rare cases it can be useful in which case unlocking pads would be a good safeguard.

Chip
image

Being able to modify single pads can on rare occasions be useful. My personal opinion would be that doing so within the layout program is a hack (in most occasions). A cleaner way would be to create a custom footprint that includes this change.


Examples where modifying pad positions within the layout program makes sense

  • Flexible solder bridges mainly usesd in single layer applications.
  • Or for that matter any component that connects via flexible leads to the board. (Some transformers have at least some of their connections made that way.)

Hello!

Thanks for your reply.
I agree with you that this is only in rare occasions. And therefore It would be better to have footprints with everything locked by default. Selecting 1 pad should select the whole chip. There are already multiple choices when clicking somewhere. Example if the ref or value is close, you will end up with a menu for selection of pad, ref, chip itself, etc. I think if there are multiple choices, then the choice of the current layer should be selected by default. When dong routing, I do routing only and the label come last. If I’m in the copper layer (up), then selecting by default the device currently under the mouse pointer would increase productivity, I think.

Pascal

I think the fact that one can edit pad positions even if the footprint is set to lock pads is a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1824468

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