Working in my first Kicad project, I’m recreating something I did in Eagle that just contains a couple of connectors and a couple of 4053 ICs. I’ve got the schematic drawn and have mostly routed the board.
However now I find I have a bunch of tracks I need to move, is there a way of literally picking up the tracks and moving them without them :
Detaching from other parts of the track.
The software deciding it knows better than me where I want to put the tracks, and trying to auto-route them (and getting it wrong, they don’t stay aligned to the grid).
So is there a way to do this?
Yes I know about push routing, that’s not what I want at the mo.
Second question, is it possible to select a bunch of (tracks in this case), with a non-rectangular area, you can do this in Eagle by clicking each point on the outline till an area is selected.
In KiCad there is no way to drag multiple tracks at the same time while keeping them connected too.
You did write:
KiCad works differently from eagle, and it will take some time getting used to. If you keep holding on to the exact same way of working as you did in eagle, then KiCad can only become a disappointment, just because it is not eagle. I completely rely on the Push 'n shove router. I don’t care at all (and neither do the electrons) whether the tracks are on some kind of grid. You set track width and clearance in the design rules and net classes, and KiCad takes care of the rest. Don’t give in to your initial averse reaction to the Push 'n Shove router. You probably only have that reaction because you are unfamiliar with it. Start using it and learn how to use it to your advantage. Don’t fight it, it really wants to be your friend, and if you adopt it, it will boost your productivity and joy in using KiCad.
On top of that, there may be an XY problem here:
Tell us what the real problem you want to solve is, and we can give better advise on how to do it “the KiCad way”.
If you want to have bigger distance between tracks than you have set in clearance settings then after dragging a track that pushes others you can little shift them one by one.
I need to set clearance to 0.2mm or lower because of some small places where tracks have to be close to each other. But when tracks are going in parallel for some distance I prefer to have 0.25 or more between them. This is a habit from previous century times when shorts between tracks happened from time to time and the probability was higher for long parallel tracks.
But now really all PCB manufacturers tests PCBs against breaks and shorts so you need not to worry about it - they will not send you such PCB.
But habit is a second human nature - getting it by small shifts track by track (at the end of whole PCB design) takes not a lot of time.
First select with rectangular.
If you draw rectangle to the right tracks to be selected have to be in rectangle.
If you draw rectangle to the left tracks to be selected need only be touched.
Second, third and so on…:
add to the selection by other rectangle selections with Shift key pressed,
delete from selection by other rectangle selections with Ctrl+Shift keys pressed,
add track to selection by Shift+click,
delete track from selection by Ctrl+click.
All rectangle actions depend if you draw rectangle to the right or to the left.
To limit selection to only tracks left only Tracks selected in Selection Filter (bottom of right panel).
Nope, it makes it easier. You just don’t move them at all (by yourself), because there is no need to do it. You just rely on the Push 'n Shove algorithm to move them for you when it turns out to be needed to do so.
no instead of dragging you can use the shove feature in Kicad which will move any number of wires required to make space for the action (dragging, routing etc.) you want to do.
Move the 6 tracks up towards the 4053 so they pretty much keep their shape but there is no blank board between them and the pins (well other than the 50mil clearance). Then I can move the board edge up…
then hover your mouse over the long horizontal section of the lowest track . . . and press D you should be able to move it up and it should “Shove” the other tracks up too.
