Hi. I’m still fairly new to KiCad, and am wondering if there is any way to select a non-rectangular block or region of schematic objects by combining multiple rectangular selections. I’ve tried a number of key modifiers while dragging and nothing seems to work. Nor did I see any “add to selection” option in the right-click menu of the block. It seems that once the first rectangle of objects are selected, there is no way of adding to it. Things can always be moved/copied piecemeal, but that can be fairly inconvenient depending on the topology.
Am I missing some way to combine multiple selections (similar to what the ctrl key does in many applications), or is it currently not possible? I apologize if I missed a recent thread on this, but the only thread I found while searching was from four years ago or so.
The entire graphics portion for eeschema is going to be rewritten to match pcbnew. Eeschema is very behind the times in terms of features and there will be many improvements.
Sorry I cannot provide a timeline on this (as I don’t know it myself)
That’s encouraging, thanks. As a new user, I wasn’t aware that the development of the two programs were significantly out of sync with each other; though in retrospect, it does show through in a number of places.
This particular thing isn’t a show stopper by any means, though it is, as you say, a bit behind the times.
The graphic abstraction layer (GAL) was first rewritten for the layout part of Kicad to be able to create a few fancy layout tools (don’t have the list in my head but you can find references to that fact on this forum). It is simply a matter of resources (aka manpower) that the schematic GAL will be rewritten at a later stage.
As of today the nightly builds of KiCad have new selection tools (in pcbnew, not eeschema):
In a similar fashion to many popular CAD tools, drag left -> right to select fully enclosed objects (window mode), and drag right -> left to select objects touched by the selection rectangle.
SHIFT modifier adds objects to selection, CTRL modifier removes them.
When GAL is ported to eeschema this same behavior will be available for schematics.
Sounds like it’s already in the works, so no need for a feature request. It’s understandable that the layout tool is being worked on first; in general, it’s a more complex tool and probably began to lag other tools more quickly. It currently has gained some quite up-to-date features. Eeschema, OTOH, while it definitely feels a bit dated, most of the shortcomings are relatively minor inconveniences.