Cannot draw copper polygon

Layout
1

I seem to be stuck on something very basic. If I select front copper layer as the active layer and then place a polygon, it seems that the only way I can finish it is with a double click. When I do that the polygon goes to a silkscreen layer and the software will not offer me the option of moving it to front copper.

I then looked at paragraph 10.2.1 in the pcbnew instructions, but that does not seem to work as presented for KiCad (5.0.2)-1. I can hit image with front copper the active layer, but clicking then on the board does not open up the “copper zone properties” dialog box.

2

It may be a silly question, but what if you:
1). Select a copper layer.
2). Click on Zone Icon.
3). Click on PCB area.

Or from the menu:

Pcbnew / Place / Polygon

can not draw on copper. For copper you need to first select a copper layer and then:

Pcbnew / Place / Zone

3

Thanks again, Paulvdh

It is not a silly question! :slight_smile:

I can see now that the problem is that we have two different buttons with different functions but the same icon. The one on the left is “show filled areas in zones” while the one on the right is “add filled zones”. I guess I either did not notice the other button or assumed that two buttons with the same icon would have the same function. Should that be called a bug? Of course when I followed instructions, the chances of me choosing the wrong one of two buttons are about 139%.

Another question is one of semantics. Although I have not directly run many different pcb layout packages, I have worked with pcb designers who used many different ones. (Cadence, Pads, PCAD, Altium, etc.) And I remember terms such as “flood”, “plane”, “pour” and perhaps a few others but I do not remember them being referred to as “zones”. Or perhaps at that time last night I was simply “zoned out.” :slight_smile:

Anyway I now seemed to be “zoned in” with my first copper zone applied to the layout. Thanks again.

4

Rule of thumb : All icons in the left toolbar are “Display tools”, while icons in the right toolbar are “Objects / Actions tools”.

5

Thank you, Efcis. That rule of thumb appears reasonable. But…a label of the toolbar would be helpful. Still, I think that particularly for beginners trying to follow instructions, making the two buttons look different would be best. I think the simplest (not necessarily the best) tweak would be for the image on one to be rotated or mirrored relative to the other. That way, when a beginner is following instructions, she/he can choose which button more resembles the image in the instructions.

6

Not only display options are on the left. I would call it the settings toolbar as you also have things like “auto delete duplicated tracks” in there.

Scratch that. That button got removed in current nightlies. So now there really are only visibility options in that toolbar.

7

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