Alright, tried reading everything but stumped.
Relatively new to Kicad. Made it most of the way into a mod complex PCP. Now finalizing the PCB in PCBnew. Performing DRC rules checker and it won’t let me use via drill sizes of < 11.8. Among other minimums in the Default net class. Tried to change the default settings but upon exit says cant, because drill < 11.8. I want a via drill of 10 mils, recommended by the PCB board shop.
Read about Global Design Rules. Can’t find that anywhere in File/Board Setup submenus. Or preferences. Or the DRC checker. I put in 10 mils for via drill size into edit predefined sizes and it takes it. But when I put this into the board setup submenu and try to exit, it says the size is below the minimum via drill size of 11.81 mils. Anyway, I just cancelled out. I chose these in the dropdown on the main PCBnew screen. No problem. Just keeps popping up as an error in DRC checker.
How do you reduce the parameters below the default minimums? How do you get at the Global Design Rules n 5.1? is 11. How do you change the defaults so they stick?
@dougls1, please tell if this was the problem. It’s a usability detail which maybe should changed in KiCad if it makes it difficult for new users to find settings. See also Layer Setup Where to find.
Point 1: this is the default how the graphical interface library used makes such a dialog (and it is not trival to make it behave differently.)
Point 2: Similar dialogs in other tools are build the same way. And here again devs might be more familiar with it as development tools like eclipse use the very same layout for their settings dialog. (Another example is inkscape.)
Point 3: Even the file browser of every operating system is similar. Just see the settings pages as folders and the settings as their files. You can have subfolders and files in the same thing. (Or has windows gotten rid of the tree view of the file system?)
In conclusion: It is understandable that the devs assumed this to be intuitive enough. Seems that assumption was wrong. Maybe there is a visual way to better communicate the fact that every layer has settings without getting rid of the layered structure. (I would assume the settings tree will only grow the more powerful kicad gets. So a good way to organize it in multiple layers will be required.)
Whilst I think the tree paradigm is pretty intuitive, many applications adopt a tabbed interface where there are multiple preference subpages. This may be an interface that some users are more familiar with.
And it limits you to at most two layers until it becomes unusable. Right now this would be enough for kicad but i am sure it will not be in the future when additional features that need settings are introduced.
The problem is that CAD tools simply need much more settings than lets say a word processor. The same user interface can not work for both. (Compounded by the fact that current “normal” programs try to remove as much user interaction as possible to make it easier to use. Removing the increased productivity one had when one got a deep understanding of tools of old. This in turn is teaching users this is the norm and making them less able to deal with complex tools.)
As CAD is aimed at people making money from it one can expect these same people to invest time into learning it. So in the end maybe not the interface is the problem but the lack of documentation.
LibreOffice: Only two levels are used but there are 43 pages (in Writer only)! So what Rene said, “The problem is that CAD tools simply need much more settings than lets say a word processor” just isn’t true. A simple text editor, maybe, although even Notepad++ has 16 pages (no tree).
Top level nodes in LibreOffice do nothing when clicked.
The real problem for new users is the manual does not keep up with the new interface changes. And the interface is non-intuitive, so simply poking around to find out the new way of doing things is hard. I’ll handle any level of difficulty with a well written and illustrated user manual. So could changing the user manual be part of any new release going forward?
Thanks so much
You know… this did it. So thanks so much!!
I was an idiot for not understanding what you meant by clicking on root settings. kept clicking on the trees right in front of me
Doug
I agree that the documentation should be up to date, of course. But a good UI doesn’t need documentation. KiCad can’t be completely self-explanatory, but in this case I blame the UI (and not the developers - or the user!)
What CircuitMaker has should be pretty easy to implement. A KDE-style TOC page would take a bit more work.
If @JeffYoung hasn’t read this already, here we have another case of the same usability problem within short time.
