Grab a component from the center of a pad to move it?

[Navalog]

Hi,

Is it possible to snap on the certer of a pad while “starting” to move a component?
I’m trying to do so to allineate some terminal blocks pads to a 5mm grid and have all the components nicely aligned.
I can do that also editing manually the coordinates but it would be more efficient and time saving in the other way

[paulvdh]

Yes, it’s possible. (Or at least, it should be)
I have been doing that regularly, even in previous KiCad versions.
I made a lot of use of it in:

Reverse engineering KiCad project from Gerber files

2021-09-06T15:15 It’s fairly complete now. 2022-01-04 This Wiki is in the process of being proof read and edited. The goal of this reverse-engineering tutorial is to re-create a complete KiCad project from partial information assuming the only information available is a schematic in some readable, (but not EDA form, such as a .pdf or a .png picture), and a set of gerber files. The Gerber files will create a PCB with much PCB information missing, however, using this method is easier than re-d…

(In short: There are no “footprints” in Gerber files, so part of the task was to remove pads and place new footprints from KiCad’s libraries over all the track ends.

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There does seem to be a bug in the new KiCad V6.
I’ve had some trouble with grabbing a footprint by a pad.
You should just be able to hover over a pad, and then press m for move, but a few days ago this did not work at all for me. No matter how hard I tried, it only grabbed a footprint by it’s center.

You can change the settings for magnetic points (pads, tracks, graphics) in:
Pcb Edtior / Preferences / Preferences / PCB Editor / Editing Options / Magnetic Points
But even when I set snap to Pads to Always it did not work as expected.

Right now I’ve done some tests on another PCB. 0603 capactiors now do work as expected, but if I try to grab a LQFP-48 by a pad, then it is one pad off.

In this screen recording I try to grab it by pin 20, but then the cursor jumps to pad 21 and grabs it there.
vokoscreen-2022-01-16_14-22-09.mkv (199.8 KB)

Can anyone else confirm this please.
I’m thinking of filing a bug report for this on gitlab.

Application: KiCad

Version: 6.0.1-79c1e3a40b~116~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.0.4
	libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Linux 5.13.0-25-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, xfce, x11

Build Info:
	Date: Jan 15 2022 20:26:22
	wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.71.0
	OCC: 7.5.2
	Curl: 7.81.0
	ngspice: 31
	Compiler: GCC 9.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
	KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
	KICAD_SPICE=ON

[Navalog]

@paulvdh

when I set snap to Pads to Always it did not work as expected.

I can confirm, that is not working

[paulvdh]

I have created a bug report for this:

Footprint grabbed by the wrong pin during a move. (#10471) · Issues · KiCad /...

After some experimentation I discovered the behavior is dependent on the grid.
It is worse on a coarse grid (for example 5mm) and appears to work correctly on a fine grid (for example 0.1mm)

You can also change the grid behavior with: Pcb Editor / Preferences / Preferences / Pcb Editor / Display Options / Snap to grid. When snapping to grid is disabled KiCad appears to behave as expected.

[PaulF8080]

Trace routing snaps to the center of a pad and you can hit space bar for user origin.