Thanks Joan. my question was a little more broad in scope, as I was talking about the footprint editor as well as PCBnew. the footprint editor does not appear to snap or magnetize to anything. I’ve tried changing layers, pass near or onto pads etc. All this needs to be taken with a grain of salt though, as I am a complete newbie to Kicad.
I have read some other replies where people talk about how easy it is to snap to centre of pads (though lines/tracks seems to go unmentioned) however I think either they have limited experience with alternative (I’m avoiding the term “professional”) CAD packages or experience with packages that are cumbersome by nature. The reason I say this is their “simple” solutions appear to be very circuitous compared to Protel or Altium. No shortcut keys need to be hit (though they are there nevertheless). I simply grab the end of a track or line and start dragging it around. If I go near another track, it snaps to centre of that track. Drag it near a pad, it snaps to centre of pad. To NOT be magnetic or snap to an object, I actually have to hold down a key while dragging an end point around. Just one of many examples I could give.
I am however so ingrained in the Altium way of thinking that I wanted to know whether or not Kicad has a different design approach that is somehow better/more efficient. IE I’m open to new ideas, but so far it seems that KiCad is a bit behind in terms of PCB design approach. Again this is not negative criticism, as I realize that a package like Altium has years of design experience behind it, and a lot of R&D dollars. With that said, KiCad could definitely evolve to be the superior package, as Altium in their wisdom went down the whole FPGA path which in my (and many others) opinion has proven to be a disaster, but that’s another story.
I like your idea about posting to the developers website. I’ll do so.
Afaik I can place pads in the FP editor manually only onto the grid (whose pitch is adjustable).
If I want off-grid pads I need to manipulate the coordinates in the pad properties (or if they have a system you can use the array function to place them 'automatically in the pattern you need).
Any other drawing elements (lines, arcs, circles, text…) snap to grid, not to pads.
The FP editor doesn’t expect tracks to be drawn in footprints… which might explain that there is no snap to pads.
In legacy canvas with the track tool and the F.Cu layer active my mouse pointer snaps to:
- grid
- F.Cu track centers
- F.Cu pad centers
For snapping to centers of tracks the tool seems to prefer 90/45degree projections of the grid on the track it snaps to.
Afaik this could be possible in OpenGL canvas, but I’m not sure.
The push&shove track placing is ~ a year out now and I don’t use the OpenGL canvas at the moment… someone else might know more about that.
Anyhow, I’m pretty sure the Dev’s who are into that kind of thing are aware of the professional solutions out there and if interested surely work on implementing this or that fav feature, but if you personally need something really bad the most fireproof way is to come up with code/solutions that can be put into the code right away. 
Also did you see this?
Thanks for the feedback/comments Joan, much appreciated. I am now in the process of laying out my first Kicad PCB (Schematic is done) and will refrain from jumping to conclusions/passing judgement etc. on Kicad until I have a little more experience
From what I have seen so far though, I am very impressed and see a very solid future for Kicad. As I’ve already stated before, I am a seasoned user of Protel and Altium (actually I go further back then that, but who remembers Orcad/Tango from the early '90’s). Consequently I have very high expectations as Altium is one very powerful package, however I no longer have access to it after leaving ABB after 14 years. The more I see though (and learn) with Kicad, the more excited I get about it’s future. Very nice work indeed and I am putting this out there so the developers and CERN know their huge efforts are appreciated. I look forward to contributing in the future once I have made some progress.
