Hi All,
Recently noticed a strange phenomena in PCBnew (“ancient” kicad bzr3256). My components started to get off-grid by a hair. I use metric grids, try not to go below 0.05mm grid spacing. PCB anchored at (0,0) - the frames get into my way, but I can live with that. Grid origin set at (0,0),
Now if I move any component and get it back to the closest position set by the grid, I loose all my connections because the part moves a hair away.
This happens to all my projects so seems like a global issue.
Anyone might have an idea what I did screwed?
Just checked few offsets, these are all below 0,01mm (0,0025mm; 0,0026mm; 0,0076mm values do repeat several times). The offsets seem kind of random to me.
Reason other than the time and scare of moving with the production project to a new enviroment, not really. Now migration to 4.0.4 also involves a painful process of rebuilding the libraries and assignments.
With lack of time, keeping with the proven old stuff which dind’t bite me (other than the above mentioned issue), seemed a reasonable choice.
Definitely will have to upgrade, and eventually will upgrade but so far must release some PCBs.
Also, any option in preferences > dialog or general that could be dealing with this behavior? (if those menus exists that is)
PS:
Libraries for the symbols didn’t change, so no stress in EEschema. And in PCBnew you can keep using your legacy libs, so no stress there either.
Only thing you need to figure out is a setup were you disable the GitHub stuff and run your legacy local libs for both parts of the program.
Plenty of posts about that on the forums.
Regarding my lost connections, well… don’t really know. For the BZR3256 with its internal 1/10000in units, small enough metric units have been rounded in some nasty way. So instead of nice, round numbers for component coordinates you always end up with some numbers with significant digits to the last decimal place. As long as it is consistent, it should not matter. You move a component over a grid, get back to the original spot and get the same “strange” coordinates - no problem. But if you move a component over a grid, and after a move getting a bit different coordinates - then it’s a problem.
On BZR3256 if the trace does not end precisely on the pad center, it is denoted as a missing connection with the ratsnest.
I can’t really triggered the change in “coordinates rounding” - why places which have originally been spot on grid, now are a bit off. Tried to reproduce it on a new design, but no repro (tried save/load; changing the grid between metric and imperial; performing DRC - no effect).
I’ve decided to bite the bullet (at least, half of it and upgraded to BZR4022. No major obstacles there, manually adjusted component placement to align it with “now-precise” metric grid but generally much easier. The components finally sit where they should be (coordinate-wise), and BZR4022 seems more friendly on traces which does not end preciesly on pad centre.
Would like to go for the Kicad4, but now it’s not best time for me to go through all the hassle. If I could run both versions on same machine, it would be easier but have read somewhere that it’s not possible. So maybe with some spare time (ehm…) I will install ver4 on a spare machine, and try to import some projects to check what’s ahead to deal with… With PCB I’m totally on own libs, with Schematic I use the simple passive component symbols from the standard library and keep my own lib for more advanced stuff.
The obsolete coarse imperial grid can deal with hard metric parts, but once you get to connectors with pins specified in mm to two decimal places, rounding errors are going to hit you
and upgraded to BZR4022. No major obstacles there, manually adjusted component placement to align it with “now-precise” metric grid but generally much easier. The components finally sit where they should be (coordinate-wise), and BZR4022 seems more friendly on traces which does not end preciesly on pad centre.