Currently when a footprint is selected, its Reference and Value are forced to visible (even if they were turned off in the Items tab).
SMD pads used to work that way, but not PTH pads. Currently neither does it.
I’d like to fix these inconsistencies so they all behave the same. Question is: which way?
Do you want to see a footprint’s hidden items when it is selected?
0 voters
If I move the footprint, those items are moved, too, right? It’s logical that they are shown if possible actions affect them. I like to see what I’m doing, without guessing.
I edited your post to show a poll. We can change it if you want. More people may participate if they don’t have to post.
Yes. Ref and Value are usually small fields, and it is certainly useful to see what you have attached to the cursor, without needing to trawl the status line.
Alternatively, can this be a settings option somewhere? Like:
[ ] ‘show hidden fields/elements when selecting/moving footprints’
Looks like the majority agrees with @eelik at the moment. I spent some time working with a few footprints where I had the text on layers not selected. At first I did not really have an opinion either way; but working through it I found that I also liked seeing everything that was moving.
Figuring that this was going to be divided, I was going to post what I found that @Joan_Sparky already posted,
However, if given a choice in development time, I’d rather that if the text fields are not-visible, then they should become not become “activated” in priority over the Footprint. In some of my Footprint designs there are Reference or Value fields in the center of the Footprint. The current action is to activate and highlight the hidden field, instead of activating the Footprint itself.
Actually, the current action is probably a bug, as the anchor determines both the location of the primary part and any other text fields the Footprint has that is assigned to be assigned as the same center as the anchor. It does not make logical sense for KiCad to activate a non-displayed field when the anchor point of the Footprint is selected.
The trouble with the setting is that the visibility settings for the hidden items are in the Items tab of the Layers palette, which makes it less likely that a setting in Preferences would be discovered. (It’d be different if they were all in Preferences, but then they’d be harder to toggle on/off as you worked.)
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