Hello,
I’m switching from Eagle to KiCad (has been my new year’s resolution for years, but I never was able to it). Now I am working on a project that’s not in a hurry, so I thought now finally I can do the transition. But I noticed something I wasn’t even aware about: When designing in Eagle I use the mouse with my right hand and use my left hand to hold the prototype or parts, a hand written schematic etc., in other words: Using my left hand for the keyboard is highly inconvenient for me. But all I find in Eagle → KiCad transition guides is the explanation that you should use the keyboard. Is there any way to to modify the controls somehow? For example instead of opening a properties dialog when double clicking a part it could “stuck” to the mouse like in Eagle, allowing it to be mirrored and rotated with middle and right click. I assume for long-time KiCad users that sounds silly, but for people migrating from Eagle that could be really helpful (especially when they use their non-mouse hand for something else like me). If that’s not possible currently, maybe in the preferences there could be an option for double-click behavior where a user can select what should happen when a part is double-clicked.
Best regards
Stefan
Hello and welcome @Stefan-Olt
Not really.
Kicad is designed around hotkeys. Mouse one hand, keyboard the other.
In the soon™ to be released 7.0, there is more automation, but, there are also over 500 functions that can be assigned to hotkeys.
I do not understand your urge to hold things in your non-mouse hand. I usually clutter my desk by putting things on top of them. If you use hand drawn schematics a lot, then get some (mechanical, not in your pc) clipboard and mount it next to your monitor.
KiCad’s shortcut keys are mostly single key presses, and you can still do that while holding things in the hand. Just straighten a finger and push it.
Most of the shortcut keys I know I’ve also started with right clicking and selecting things from the popup menu, or from using the main menu, and only later with functions I use often I bother to memorize a shortcut key. If you don’t like the keyboard, you can keep on using the menu’s
To me it looks like you just have to spend some time to build up some muscle memory so that they also know that KiCad is not Eagle.
I don’t think so.
It will be helpful at the beginning, but the end effect will be that they never learn to use KiCad effectively.
But I’m someone who migrated to KiCad after 20 years with Protel where you use right hand for mouse and left for keyboard 
Sounds like you have to have two monitors and open an element pdf or your schematic at the second one.
I open schematic and PCB at the same time (at halfs of one monitor) only during first phase of PCB design when I divide footprints into related groups (marking at schematic the element whose footprint I am just moving at PCB helps a lot). Since I moved to KiCad I don’t use written schematics at all. They have no such functionality (unless I don’t know something ).
Thanks for your fast replies!
You’re probably right, that’s somekind of muscle memory, I want to rotate a part and I press the right mouse key without thinking about it.
I do have two monitors (for example to be able to view schematic and pcb), but that doesn’t free my left hand. I assume for others it’s difficult to understand, but I probably do that since I started electronics in my early teens over 20 years ago.
You’ve stated that there are over 500 functions that can be assigned to hotkeys. That is great, because that means you it’s not “KiCad forces you to it this way”, but rather “You can customize KiCad fo fit your needs/workflow”. Why not be able to assign these functions to the mouse keys as well? My mouse even has two additional buttons on the side that are of no use at all…
You said in regards to this feature “the end effect will be that they never learn to use KiCad effectively”. Why do you think so? Why are hotkeys on the keyboard more effectively than mouse buttons in general (for you they most definitely are, because that’s how you work with KiCad)?
Please do not see this as a “we-are-trying-to-copy-eagle”-feature, but rather another way to be able to customize KiCad to best fit your own needs. There are probably people out there that can only use one hand for medical reasons, for them being able to do more stuff with one hand is definitely an improvement.
Best regards
Stefan
It’s been requested and may show up in a future version: Allow binding mouse buttons to actions (#5179) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab
Because more buttons is more betterer.
With more buttons, more functions are accessible with a single keystroke and this increases productivity (once you’ve learned them).
A long time ago I had a trackball with a few programmable buttons. I found that mapping the [Enter] key to a mouse button was one of the best uses for one of those buttons. Because of that there were many occasions I did not have to move a hand to the keyboard just to press the [Enter] key. Having direct [Cut] and [Paste] buttons on your mouse (trackball) was also useful, although this is also nicely solved in Linux.
In Linux, (Mint with XFCE desktop) I have two buffers for copying and pasting. There is the regular [Ctrl + C] and [Ctrl + V] combination, but there is also a separate buffer. Anything that gets selected is always inserted in this second buffer automatically, and it is immediately available for pasting, which is done by pressing the scroll wheel.
In V6 Preferences->Preferences->Mouse&Tochpad there are already improvements to setup what left, middle and right button, drag and scroll gestures do.
Training the muscle memory is a matter of human age what may take a long time to reach a good level. If you instruct a symphony orchestra with musicians to pass the instrument to their neighbour, the result will be suddenly awfull. Keyboard goes to strings, strings goes to wind instruments - all instruments are same qualitiy and musicians are same skills but there is awfull result as they are not allowed to use what their muscle memory is trained for. This way, its no disadvantage to improve the mouse configuration possibilities of Kicad.
[quote=“paulvdh, post:7, topic:39279”]
Because more buttons is more betterer.
With more buttons, more functions are accessible with a single keystroke and this increases productivity (once you’ve learned them).
[/quote]For you that’s most likely true. For me, I would always have to look up the functions that I rarely use.
I’ve seen that, all it needs is define click actions (when something is selected/not selected). Maybe one could just define the hotkey, so there is no need for an extensive drop-down menu and it would be extremely flexible.
Nice analogy! Although I don’t think my Eagle-muscle-memory is even close to that of a professional violinist…
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