In KiCad v7, it’s very easy to cross-probe a net in the schematic editor using the “highlight net” tool button in the right-hand toolbar. Doing this causes the PCB editor to zoom in and highlight the track, and shows the net name in the status bar on the bottom of the window.
My recollection is that in previous versions there was an equivalent tool button in the toolbar of the PCB editor, but this seems to be absent in v7. Where did this tool button go?
To cross-probe a footprint pad it appears you can left-click the pad. You can also right-click on a pad to get a pop-up menu, then click “Select → Select on Schematic”, but this seems redundant as the right-click already did this. Either way, you have to find a part of the pad that isn’t near a track or the track gets selected instead of the pad.
To cross-probe a track you have to right-click on the track to get the pop-up menu, then navigate to “Net Inspection Tools → Highlight Net”, as the “Select → Select on Schematic” option is grayed-out. And don’t forget to cancel the track segment selection (ESC twice; the pop-up menu “Clear net highlighting” doesn’t do the job) before attempting to select a different track, or it will repeat the operation on the currently highlighted track.
There is also a Nets tab in the Appearance pane, but using it is not simple. First, left clicking (or even double-clicking) a net name in this window appears to do nothing; it doesn’t even appear to select the net name. Right-clicking a net name displays a pop-up menu which includes a “highlight net”, but while this highlights the track it does not highlight the net in the schematic. Nor does it highlight the name in the net pane or display the net name in the status bar, which makes it unclear what track is actually highlighted.
What works best is the so-called back-tick (grave accent) hotkey, which seems to give the old behavior. However, a user shouldn’t have to know a hotkey to access basic functionality.
I’m posting this here to get user feedback in case I’m missing something obvious before submitting this as an issue in the bug tracker.
This button was removed as we decided to replace the “full-time highlight tool” with highlight actions that work on the selection (or the item under the mouse cursor).
This part is a bug. The rest of this is intentional (the current design).
You can also right-click any copper item and find the highlight command in the Net Inspection Tools menu, as you pointed out. Not all functions are going to be shown as buttons on the toolbar; use of KiCad involves learning some amount of hotkeys or context menus (generally, all functions that are available on hotkeys should be in a context menu also)
Hi Jon, thanks for replying. Is this a known bug, or should I create a new issue for it?
I think there is still room for some usability improvements, as I’ve described above. I’m guessing that should be in a separate issue for ease of tracking?
What exactly are you proposing to request? You can open an issue requesting that we bring back the highlight tool button, but I personally don’t think it’s likely to go anywhere. This change happened in V6, not in V7, by the way, so it’s had quite some time to settle.
What? You expect me to offer suggestions for improvement rather than just whine about how it isn’t exactly what I want? Oh, all right…
I don’t care about the highlight tool button if the replacement is better. What I see looks like a good start, but I think the current interface can be significantly improved. Mostly what’s needed is making things work consistently.
Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head:
Left-clicking on a net name in the Nets tab should do something visual. My suggestion is it should act like the “Highlight Net” hotkey: (1) highlight the name in the Nets tab; (2) select and highlight the net on the PCB; and (3) highlight the net in the schematic. At an absolute minimum it could pop up the same menu as a right-click.
Left-clicking on a pad highlights the pad and associated net; that’s good. However, if that pad is near to a track, even if that track is on another layer, the track is selected rather than the pad. This is unlike the Highlight Net hotkey which immediately selects the net. This makes it very difficult to highlight a net compared to the old behavior.
It’s confusing that the “Select on Schematic” pop-up menu item is grayed out in some circumstances and not others.
I don’t have a clear enough idea of how I would change things yet to write a good proposal issue; I need to play around with the current features first. I’d like to think some others will contribute to this discussion here in the meantime.