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I want to say thank you to everyone who was helpful. From this thread, I got the actual location of the manual (crucial!) and some reassurance that by version 9 the things I’ve been frustrated by have in fact been addressed.
So now I just need to figure out which machine I’m going to write off from the security procedures and break the packaging system on.
Adding a new PPA does not “break the packaging system”. You also have the options of using flatpak or docker.
I was almost sure that (in Windows) from Help menu I have access to all KiCad manuals at my HDD.
I have just checked (V8.0.9) and I am surprised seeing there only ‘Help - Getting Started with KiCad’ giving me “file… could not be found”. I have searched for them and found directory C:\Program Files\KiCad\8.0\share\doc\kicad\tutorials being empty, while I am installing each time the full installation package and certainly not switch installation manuals off, I think.
I work at PC being disconnected from net. I had to see these manuals being available directly from KiCad (with one of previous versions) or I must have dreamed it.
Separately from downloading KiCad I download all its manuals (from time to time, as they are alive) to have them ‘at hand’. But since I have read all of them (in 2017) I had no time to read them once more, what I all time have in my plans.
I read forum and I think this way I know about any new features. From time to time I see here someone loosing lot of his time looking for some weird solution to a non-existent problem just because he saved some time not reading even Getting Started manual.
And about grid.
I work (at PCB) with practically constantly grid set to 0.1mm. Sometimes I set it to 1mm (when drawing a PCB outline). I have never tried to use bigger grids.
All my footprints have courtyard rectangles placed at 0.1mm grid so working also with 0.1mm grid I position them touching each other.
Other grids happened to me to use only in Footprint Editor when positioning pads.
In your case if I were to position something in 19.05 raster I would have my grid set to 0.05mm.
I do not have the option of installing “unvetted” software on any machine which I also use for security work. Going outside what’s available from the Debian packaging system means effectively retiring one system from most other use. Getting it back for security work will mean getting a new blank SSD and installing an OS on that machine from scratch.
This is why I wanted some reassurance that it would be worth it before going and downloading the new version. So, yes, I have a reason to prefer version 6 even though you may not care about it anymore.
Anyway. I was not just “dumping on” kicad in my first post. It was actually pretty clinical, although my frustration was showing through. I went through literally every last purpose that other CAD software uses their grid system for in layout. One at a time, methodically, saying exactly what I had done and why I believed that the grid system in kicad did not (in version 6) support each of those specific purposes.
And nobody who responded told me that the grid system did in fact support any of those specific purposes and how. I am still somewhat mystified by the fact that any version of the software was ever released in which the layout grid system does not support any purpose except constraining movement, and does not even constrain movement reliably. But I am reassured that this isn’t a design philosophy and that later versions did in fact recover some of this functionality. Although no one has yet told me how, I have at least got the manual now.
As an aside, I thought the ‘array’ feature was completely useless because I could not use it to place interchangeable components. As it turns out I was wrong. Although nobody on this thread bothered to tell me about any specific use case for it, someone did direct me to a youtube video of someone who did.
Although it is completely useless for placing components it is not completely without any use case. It’s worthwhile for pins and vias and probably other things that do not have anything to do with the schematic.
Wow, a security researcher who’s unaware of the existence of VMs
I use grid to position footprint anchor ‘in grid’ and nothing more. From your first post I understood that you expected top-left courtyard border will be positioned in grid what from my point of view is absolutely senseless. Courtyard can be smaller/bigger if you want less/more margin around your footprint. Positioning based on it…
The problem with V6 for me is that:
V5 was ‘current’ for 3 years.
When V6 came at the same time something was changed (in Python as I remember, no KiCad developers intention) what make V6 not to be used at Win7 PC. It took me more than half year to move with all my work to Win10. So I was using V5 for almost 4 years and V6 for few months.
I remember nothing what is specific for V6.
Have you looked through settings. May be there is something restricting move only to step being grid multiple. If so then if you have footprint off grid it will always be off grid.