I have a question. I usually put lineair dimension in the board design to see how big things are and to outline things like connectors. I use the ‘User.drawings’ layer for this. (on a side note, this is the ‘proper’ layer to use for this?
Anyways. In below example, my board is too small, and I want to enlarge it by dragging the middle white box to the left. Unfortunately for me, the attached lineair dimension of 59mm does not move along with it.
Usually I just delete the dimension and place a new one. Is there an option or something to connect the dimension to… anything… such like an edgecut or silkscreen element?
All the “User” layers are for your personal use, they do not have any special meaning in KiCad.
You may consider to use the “Fab” layer. These are meant for making notes that are relevant for fabricating / assembling the PCB.
If you select your dimension, you see a bunch of small squares appear. You can drag any of the squares to change the associated part of the dimension. So at least you do not have to delete and redraw the dimension itself.
And when dragging one of such points, KiCad draws a small circle around it if it recognises a snap point, such as a line on Edge.Cuts.
You can also turn it around:
First draw some dimension, then drag the end points around until you have a required size, and then drag the Edge.cuts lines to match your dimension. Unfortunately there is no snapping in this case. For quite a lot of actions snapping only works for items on the same layer.
Best I know there is no way to keep the dimension and a line together in such a way that when you change the line length, the dimension length changes with the line. You can put a dimension and a line in a group, and then you can move them together, but you still have to change them individually.
