How to set Grid Origin color?

[wiser]

Is it possible to set the Grid Origin color somewhere, or also set the Drill/Plase File Origin color?

Grid Origin is barely visible against the black background.

[mf_ibfeew]

Is it possible to set the Grid Origin color somewhere, or also set the Drill/Plase File Origin color?

AFAIK no (I found no ebtry for that in Preferences–>Board–>colors).

Grid Origin is barely visible against the black background

Than we have different opinion about “barely visible”. (picture taken from Win10-version of kicad)

[BlackCoffee]

There are Three types of Origins: Grid, Page, Drill

The Pref>Colors: Can change Grid Origin by changing the Grid color. Need to exit the PCB to complete the change.

[wiser]

I don’t have a very contrasting grid, so the Grid origin is hardly visible.

Application: KiCad x64 on x64

Version: (7.0.0-rc1-145-gbd6d0b6cb6), release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.1
FreeType 2.12.1
HarfBuzz 5.0.1
FontConfig 2.14.1
libcurl/7.86.0-DEV Schannel zlib/1.2.13

Platform: Windows 10 (build 19045), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW

Build Info:
Date: Jan 13 2023 06:49:13
wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers)
Boost: 1.80.0
OCC: 7.6.2
Curl: 7.86.0-DEV
ngspice: 38
Compiler: Visual C++ 1934 without C++ ABI

Build settings:
KICAD_SPICE=ON

[mf_ibfeew]

I don’t have a very contrasting grid …

I see the difference now. You have the grid displayed as lines, while Blackcoffee and I have only dots as grid. In your case the Grid-origin is really bad visible.
And because it’s the same color as the grid (same setting according to B.) there is currently not much you can do.

For a feature-request I can think of three solutions:

• simply hardcode the grid-origin thickness dependent on the grid-settings:
  • no grid or dotted grid: no change to current behaviour
  • for line-grid: doubled linewidth of the grid-origin-shape (must be tested, but I think that would be enough)
• setable grid-origin line-thickness in the global preferences (as factor compared to the grid-linewidth)
• or another color-setting added specific for grid-origin shape

I would vote for the first (simply hardcode), because I think it’s the easiest to implement (no change on the preferences-file-definition or color-theme definition required) and would be enough for most users. Also works without additional user-effort.

If you want you could file gitlab issue. Add your picture and that of blackcoffee, that shows the difference in display and visibilty and allows to judge your issue.

[jmk]

Perhaps experiment with your grid color/hue/saturation. Maybe go to dots for your grid?

[wiser]

@ mf_ibfeew Thanks for the review, so I wrote a new Issue: PCB Editor: Separate Grid Origin color setting (#13532) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab

Thank you all.