When I use my mouse to drag a rectangle around a bunch of objects in Select mode, they are instantly ready to be moved to a new position. I’ve found that I can Copy with the appropriate key-stroke, but that seems to be about it. It seems like I should be able to do the same functions that I get in a right-click menu over a symbol, but I’m not having any luck doing that. Am I doing something wrong?
To be more specific, I’m trying to rearrange the Reference for my symbols. After laying everything out, I’ve decided that I want to hide the Values for my symbols, and only have the Refs listed. (I did that thanks to the help of KiField.) However, now my Ref is still spaced above where the Value was. Based on my layout, the Refs are closer to the symbols that are above it, which can cause confusion. I want to move the Ref closer to the symbol, which doesn’t seem to be possible by just clicking on the Ref and trying to drag it.
I have been successful right-clicking a single symbol and choosing Autoplace Fields, as well as use the O shortcut. I have several hundred components that I need to do this on, though, so I hope to not manually select each symbol and redo each one individually.
Can anybody shed some light on how select works, and what I’m doing wrong? Any suggestions on a better way to go about doing this?
Do not use “g” nor “d” to drag your text, but use “m” for move.
Usually there is no need to click on your item first, but be carefull where you hover, because with “m” ove you can move almost anything, components, vaules, refces, board outlines, tracks, etc.
Hover and “m” ove work pretty good, but if you first click on an item it gets (and stays) prefererd as a selection above others. If this happens, then press [Esc] to unselect your selection.
For moving multiple text items at the same time, you can first drag a box around the PCB to select too much, and then press:
Right Mouse button / Select / Filter Selectrion …
And then adjust the checkboxes to only select what you want to select.
and then press “m” ove.
Thanks for the tip on using the M key to move the Ref, didn’t think to try that instead of just clicking. That did work as expected. (It seems to snap to a different grid than Auto-arrange, something to keep in mind.)
I ended up working around this by holding down the O key and moving the mouse over all of the symbols who’s refs I wanted to move. A bit of a hack, but since the components were all lined up in a grid, it worked fine here.