I would just like to point out that there are millions of people that use Kicad every day without any of the problems you appear to have. Wouldn’t you think if the Tool was as fundamentally flawed as you suggest that it would be long gone and forgotten ? The reality is you clearly have no understanding of what you are doing. I mean " No use case for make array " demonstrates zero understanding of even the basics, ‘make array’ in its simplest form is used to place LEDs in accurate patterns. Read the manual, someone else can teach you how to find it as this is a waste of my time and effort
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It seems you and Kicad may be incompatible. You could demand a refund. Have you ever heard the expression “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”? Your first two posts here reek of vinegar.
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Please then tell me what make-array is for.
Is there some way to use it that’s actually useful, and if so what is it?
Did you try a basic google of “make array kicad”? You’ll find lots of videos if you don’t have the patience to read or experiment yourself.
Reading the manual helps a lot …
Okay, first page I got with basic googling was
I got: This can be used with some kind of scripting or plugin, kicad should really implement this natively.
I think I tend to agree.
Second page I got was
Which goes into cases of using it for things like laying out arrays of pins and vias - ie, things which have nothing to do with the schematic. Okay, I concede that it isn’t quite as completely useless as I thought. It just can’t be used to place actual components.
From there I got referred to
Which does indeed confirm that “align vertically” and “align horizontally” do indeed squash them all together onto the same horizontal or vertical line. But does not claim that line will ever be aligned with a grid line. It goes on to the “distribute horizontally” and “distribute vertically” tools, which space things out at even intervals – which can be useful, but these intervals are an equal division of however many there are, and have nothing to do with the grid. Further the youtube presenter gets caught by a bug where apparently the order things were created in randomizes their vertical positions while distributing them horizontally.
“read the manual” and “you and kicad may be incompatible” are exactly the kind of statements that do not indicate what the grid is for and why it does not do ANY of the things that grids in CAD programs do.
And advice to “google” things just resulted in confirmation that others are dealing with the same problems.
First of all, you aren’t going to get a whole lot of help on version 6, when version 9 has been released for 6 months.
Secondly, your attitude needs adjusting. Ask for help, and people will willingly give their time to help you. Complain that a tool that everyone on this site uses is fundamentally flawed is bound to get you nowhere. Just because you don’t know how to do something, that doesn’t make the tool defective.
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I’m trying to be neutral here, but I’ll admit to a degree of frustration.
Is there any simple way to get things imported from the schematic aligned on the grid? Is this just something that Kicad users have decided they don’t need, or does everybody who cares about it just have to use some third-party plugin or script to do it?
Is there any simple way to get movement fully constrained to grid -sized increments, reliably? This is the only “grid” thing that Kicad’s grid seems to try to do. But it doesn’t even do that reliably. Is this also something that the users have just decided they don’t need? If they have decided they don’t need it, then what do they do instead?
If I do read the manual, will it tell me how to do these things, or will it just tell me about things that are actually implemented?
OK.
First of all, you need to realize that the Schematic and Layout are not designed to communicate positional information back and forth.
The Schematic has its own grid, which should be fixed at 50mils. The position of objects in the Schematic is completely unrelated to the position of objects in Layout.
Kicad will let you place footprints that have been assigned in the schematic into Layout, but then it is up to you to move them where you want them.
ETA: There should be a disclaimer somewhere that says “Note: Kicad is NOT Fritzing!"
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I will re-state what was said above - version 6 is really old, and throwing mud around based on an old version won’t get you very far. I can’t remember at all what the grid behaviour in thar version was. Version 9 is the current version, it is used for plenty of professional (commercial, open hardware, and research - e.g. CERN) production, as well as hobbyists / makers. Kicad moves everything to the grid with no issues.
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I don’t mean to be slinging mud around. I just want some concrete reassurance that this basic functionality, in some concrete form, actually exists in the current version. That’s what none of these comments have actually said.
You came closest to saying it when you said “Kicad moves everything to the grid with no issues.” Thank you. That’s the best and most helpful thing I’ve heard anyone say. That alone makes it worthwhile to at least go see if I can find videos or something from anyone using version 9 and explaining exactly what it does provide.
There’s a lot of stuff Kicad could be providing which you might consider relevant to the problem but isn’t actually importing things on the user-defined grid, and isn’t actually constraining movement reliably, and isn’t actually accepting ratios or imperial measurements or user-defined units for grid sizes, and isn’t actually providing a “snap component to grid” functionality.
It might be all of those, it might be one or two, it might be something else entirely. I’m glad to hear that something has been done, anyhow.
Kicad has loads of positioning tools.
The Grid is probably the least useful - in my workflow, I only use to to space traces.
If you want to position footprints accurately to each other, either use the Array tool, or the many “position” tools.
When people open a thread with such a statement, my motivaton to continue reading drops to slightly above zero.
Then I see a very long post with seemingly trivial details.
KiCad V6? It’s 2025.
Yes.
- Schematic Editor / Preferences / Preferences / Schematic Editor / Grids and set your grid to 50mil. This is the simple solution. Do not use any other grid before you have read all of KiCad’s documentation.
- In the schematic editor: Zoom out, select evertying (a box as big as the sheet), then Right Mouse button and Align Elements to Grid.
Euhm, leave the grid on. Don’t turn it off? V6 is too long ago to remember peculiarities, but as long as you always use a 50mil grid you encounter no problems.
Are you asking us whether there is anything in the manual that is worth reading for you? Is that a serious question?
But either way, I verified it for you:
This took me much less time then it took you to write your post.
But I do feel some sympathy for you. I also tend to fall in the trap of procrastinating while I know there are more efficient ways to learn things.
Is there now some way to use the array tool to position the footprints of components on the schematic, so they then get imported to those footprints? That’s important to know, and that’s one of the crucial things I have been trying to do. Thank you.
Get your terminology right. There are no footprints in the schematic. Writing such things is confusing.
Agh. You’re right. Footprints are assigned in the schematic but actually placed on the PCB layout tool.
You’ve wasted way more of your own time on this thread (let alone all the others reading) than it would have taken to download a current version and just try this out. Ask chatGPT next time.
First you have to drop the misconception that the position of the symbols on the schematic have anything to do with the position of footprints on the layout and accept that the workflow is not how you imagined it. As another poster said: KiCad is not Fritzing.
As usual it’s usually the things you think you know that ain’t so that trip you up.
Thank you, by the way, for pointing at docs.kicad.org.
Nothing I had seen since opening kicad had directed me there. Including all the people who told me to go read the manual but never said where it was to be found. That’s pretty crucial.
it’s the first result on google. stop wasting actual human’s time with your laziness.