Routing my first PCB with KiCad I’m very disapointed in the way dragging a routed footprint works. Below are the results of dragging component RL1 a bit to the left and a bit to the right resp., using hotkey ‘G’ in the default canvas (as this doesn’t work at all in OpenGL, but that seems to be an unresolved issue [#1661962].) And this is just the simplest form of routing. Imagine a 100 pin chip. Searching this forum it doesn’t seem to be a problem at all, which sounds unbelievable to me.
I can hardly believe that the developpers of Pcbnew dare to delliver this kind of dragging to their users, because:
A. Only the end segments of tracks are dragged, and (therefore)…
B. Tracks collide with each other or with pads (no shoving at all), and (not of the least)…
C. The 45 degree limit is not met.
This is not dragging, this is just moving, not bordered with how the tracks are laid out, the user left to his fate. Meaning, it’s wiser to delete all misvormed tracks, move the footprint and start routing all over again.
Am I missing something, or do I have to deal with a dragging tool producing crap like this?
I agree that one cannot expect miracles, but I checked this simple dragging example in DipTrace and yes, also there traces colide when the footprint is dragged, but at least angles stay at 45 degrees and with a few steps your back on track:
You might want to check out the push&shove router in the OpenGL canvas then [F11]?
Can do the same as DipTrace and won’t cost you $1k for unlimited layers and pins:
I’ve noticed the shove option before posting this drag issue, but now I see that dragging tracks affected by a drag action of the footprint, are very easy to correct with this option, because angles are changed to 45 degrees immediatly after hitting ‘D’ and moving the cursor a bit. Great!
Wishlist added to the bug report. I think this is the proper way to handle complaints about features we’d like to see that don’t exist yet. https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1803260
I’m very thankful for what KiCad is doing. Thank you developers! Keep pushing! (and shoving…and routing…and making cool stuff).
Is there an update on this? I am unable to drag footprints no matter what. I’ve tried Accelerated toolset, Fallback, ‘D’ hotkey, ‘G’ hotkey. Nothing works.
You can not drag footprints with traces attached. It would be a new feature that can only be added to a major version. (KiCad release policy dictates this)
You can however move footprints which is done with hotkey m
The comment section of that bug report clearly shows how biased some commenters are without even noticing it. A lot of users think their “little request” is both the most important missing feature and very easy to implement (The later seems to stem from thinking only about the one usecase they want this feature for without realizing what can of worms it will open)
I don’t really see that in the gitlab report linked to above. The original post of this thread is a different matter…
Dragging footprints with PnS is a much wanted feature anyways, which can be seen in the amount of duplicate bug reports and this discussion. It’s fair to call it “important”, but that’s of course subjective. I’m sure that for every often requested feature there necessarily are some people who think it’s the most important feature for them and get frustrated because of the lack of the feature.
The comment by peter is definitely a bit questionable (The rest of the comment does not really get better but the opening sentence really sets the tone):
The lack of this feature is a massive oversite.
That has bias and a self-centred point of view written all over it. (Which was my point above.)
All of this is made worse by the fact that Thomas already took on the feature (as indicated in the report description) when this was written so it was completely unnecessary to post anything let alone stuff like that (a “affects me as well click” would have been more than enough at that point)
Hi Matheus, welcome back.
The post you’re reacting to is 3 years old, and OP has not written any posts from shortly after that and it seems unlikely he’ll be back.
Can someone lock this thread now and let it sink to the bottom of this forum where it belongs?
The poster you answered to explicitly said he’s not a dev. So why do you answer him as if he represented the KiCad development team? This is a user forum, run by users, and everyone represents just themselves (unless stated othewise). Even the developers represent themselves. “Entice” was only some random person’s word, so it’s not very useful to comment on that.
If you doubt the commitment level of KiCad developers you are welcome to follow the kicad-devel mailing list and the issue database for a while.
