When editing Graphic Line (or wire & bus) Properties in the Schematic Editor there is a “Style” box containing five different styles of lines; dotted, dashed etc.
The dot and dash lengths can be altered in:
Schematic Editor > File > Schematic Setup > General > Formatting > Dashed lines.
Dot and dash lengths change correctly in the Schematic Editor.
In the Symbol Editor, when editing a graphic line, a similar box titled “Polygon Drawing Properties” opens with the same “Style” box, listing the same alternatives as the Schematic Editor, but, the dot and dash lengths are fixed and do not respond to dashed line changes in the Schematic Setup.
Is this correct Kicad behavior?
Do others suffer this problem?
Am I missing something?
Works the way you described here UM22.04 KC 7.0.6. Can’t attest if it worked differently as generally only use solid line and on occasion default dashed lines.
I think this is intentional because the setting affects the existing lines on-the-fly. This means you can change all the dashed lines in a schematic by changing the value. But because symbols come from elsewhere and may be designed by someone else the line styles shouldn’t change globally – they must stay as designed.
This is somewhat problematic philosophy. Some features have a “default” value, for example size 0 in an individual junction dot means it should follow the project default. If the font of a text is Default it also follows the project’s default setting if the default is changed later. It’s different than for example text size: the default project setting changes only the initial value when a new text item is created, but otherwise sizes aren’t changed when this default is changed.
EDIT: there’s also this “missing feature”: it’s not possible to deviate from the default for dashed lines in the schematic.
I read @jmk as more of a possible feature request. IE: Symbol Editor / New Symbol / Name and have the ability to customize the line with more options (similar to) but not tied to settings in Schematic Setup. Below shows a symbol created with at this point the fixed choice (Polygon Drawing Properties) for lines and the outer lines shows @eelik’s point of lines being changed by Schematic Setup while maintaining the lines in symbol set by Polygon Drawing Properties.
No, it wasn’t a feature request.
Although with a different title, what appeared to be a box with the same actions as the schematic, didn’t work. The box has been around a while, but I couldn’t remember if I’d used it or if it had worked previously. Hence the question in the forum.
