It’s been quite a long time ago that I (probably accidentally?) bumped into the “modern” canvas (which was called OpenGL back then in KiCad V4), and I didn’t like it much. Everything looked weird, colors were wrong, and probably a bunch of other small things.
Then I decided to put up with it because the Interactive Router only works with the modern canvases, and I thought the Interactive Router was a nice feature, and worth exploring a bit. It did not take much time however to get completely addicted to it. With it you can do in a few minutes, what would have taken an hour before. It makes it almost trivial to squeeze in the last few tracks on a densely populated PCB. And after using it for some time It even starts influencing component placement. Now I put components closer together than I would have dared before.
Take for example this (not so big) THT board. I put in some extra effort here, because it had to fit in the space alotted. The top side is almost solid components.
The Interactive router is such a game changing feature that I can not imagine switching back to a PCB design package without it.
My guess is that you probably only want the obsolete canvas because you’re used to it, but holding on to those old features stops you from learning to appreciate the rapid improvements made in the development in KiCad. It is my understanding that you’re frustated about KiCad for some reason. I would probably also get frustrated If I wanted to hold on to the ways KiCad used to work, and had to go through the pain of setting up compiling environments and compiling KiCad myself just to be able to hold on to some old features.
It is a nasty trade of human psychology. Us, human beings, have a tendency to stick with what we’re used to and resist change, even if it is for the better. A classic (but totally unrelated) example of this is wives sticking to (and defending) their husbands even in abusive relationships.
2 years ago I could have understood sticking to the old canvas. There were still some features missing in the new canvas, and therefore I tended to switch back and forth between old and new, but now I’ve mostly forgotten what the old canvas even looks like.
In your (only) other thread “Not impressed with V5”, you wrote you were going back to KiCad V4 after just an hour because you “wasted too much time relearning basic tasks”, but how much time are you “wasting” now, in setting up and compiling for the old canvas?
I do not know you very well, but I’m guessing that when you invest some time in getting used to the new canvas (Give it a month, design 3 or 4 PCB’s in it, use the Interactive router) you would not want to switch back anymore, and you may even want to change your user name.
Resistance is probably futile anyway. The old canvas is going to be dropped completely somewhere in the future. Probably in V6, maybe later. I don’t really know, nor care, because I don’t use it anymore.
