General Usability Comment

Hi
I recently asked a question concerning a hatched copper fill, this lead me to have a quick look around to see if any other common readily available design packages had this feature.

Anyway, I landed on EasyEDA (online and not client) whilst they don’t have the hatching or some niceties of KiCad, I was mightily impressed on the ease and simplicity of the schematic interface. The speed of entering (common) components was a dream and very intuitive. The right click functions of the mouse where fantastic. It took me longer to find the convert to PCB button that to add 10 components rotated positioned etc. The ability to have a component ‘running’ on the mouse ready to be entered again was particularly nice.

I would ask the developers to consider the ease and quickness of entering (common) components in version6, in makes such a difference to users and productivity.

Thanks

Especially for newcomers it’s great to have everything immediately visible and available. That is the strength of EasyEDA. It doesn’t automatically mean that it would be great or easier for continous use, though. KiCad focuses on serious work rather than light casual use.

Sometimes KiCad feels old-fashioned. It’s caused at least partly by the UI where I need to open dialogs for things which could be less interruptive. The component dialogs are a good example. Yes, EasyEDA is superior for placing common symbols (although only for selecting the symbol! Otherwise hotkeys and shortcuts can make it work like EasyEDA.) EasyEDA has also the properties of the selected item immediately available for editing. And the Find dialogs in KiCad are horrible, blocking the view, while almost all modern PC application interfaces have a small uninterruptive taskbar tool for that.

2 Likes

I first started with KiCad using “R”, “C” etc and only later realised that I really wanted “R_Small”, “C_Small” etc.
It would be nice if there was a simple way to make the “small” variants the default

HI eelik,

I wasn’t meaning the component icons specifically, but the function and the way of using things like the mouse right click button functionality or the continual same component adding junction. It would keep a resistor say ‘running’ on the mouse cursor ready for it to be placed when left button pressed - 10 resistors needed 10 left mouse button clicks.

It bugs the hell out me the continued use of the cursor snap function when not placing or editing a component - I don;t need Snap running with I’m choosing a line to be deleted or place a selection box around components. Talk about boxes around components, if you happen to move the mouse when trying to right click you automatically invoke the moved command. Let me right click and CHOOSE to move.

Rant over !!!

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