Thanks. So, yes, it looks like if I click the “highlight pins and nets” button in eeschema, then click a blank portion of the schematic, everything is un-highlighted.
The confusing aspect for me, was that I had highlighted the net from within pcbnew. But, I didn’t, and still don’t see any way to un-highlight the net from within pcbnew. That doesn’t seem like very good UI behavior, and I think there should be an un-highlight all button somewhere within pcbnew (unless it’s there and I’m not finding it).
Press ‘`’ button(it’s the highlight shortcut key) in a blank area of the PCB, and the highliht will be canceled.
But I don’t think this is a good way, in AD, there is a clear button to clear all the selection and high light in PCB editor and Schematic editor, but currently I haven’t found any similiar button in KiCAD 6.0.0.
I am not a programmer so maybe this is not practical. But what would make sense to me would be to right click on the “highlight nets” button and get the option to dehighlight one or all nets.
A similar “clear-highlights” button exists in the Mentor layout tool as well (which I’m quite familiar with). It seems like a simple feature to add with a very good value add, IMO.
Most of my PCBs are having ground fills all around. It’s hard to find a truly empty area, as using the ‘`’ on a ground fill higlights all ground. Old type “ESC” to abort highlight was more natural to me.
The usability problem is real. People have been puzzled about this for a while, even I was recently when I had already forgotten how the new system works.
I usually work at zoom levels > x15, that shows me only a few cm2 of the board area.
Now at first I frequently hit ESC (out of old habits), and only then then try to find a zone-free spot to deselect a net.
It’s easier to de-select by selecting already selected item than it is to use the “`” key to de-select by hitting a free space.
There is already a Clear Highlight action. It’s available in the right-click context menu, and by default has hotkey ~ (aka Shift + ` on a US keyboard layout). Highlighting in empty space is not the only way!
We can’t bind ESC to this action and also permit highlighting to remain active while other tools are active, which is a desirable feature.
Which a confused user doesn’t know and probably doesn’t think of, considering these questions and even my own experience.
Hotkeys with non-US keyboards are very problematic. I have said this before, and commented on some issues, that only US ascii letters and numbers are readily available on (probably) all latin based keyboards. Some default keys don’t work at all and some combinations can’t be used at all. Neither backtick nor tilde, or their respective key combinations, work here at all. Even if I change all non-working hotkeys (which I don’t want to do) I would still need to remember which is which, and be aware that the function has a hotkey.
That option and the corresponding icon seems inactive on my 6.0 stable version installation, and the hotkey does not do anything:
May be I am missing a switch somewhere to activate it?
Edit: Oops, I confused Ctl+’ with Shift+’. The latter does work to deselect the highlighting. However I still wonder why that icon is inactive the whole time, even before a highlight has been selected?
Edit2: I found it. When net is highlighted in PCBnew as described in post #1 that button toggles the highlighting. However it is a bit confusing that when the net is highlighted from a command/seletion in the schematic editor, the button does not do anything.
