In KiCad 8, was the Zone : Properties Window : Button Export Settings To Other Zones removed?
I thought it used to exist on the bottom somewhere:
In V7.0.11, it is bottom left
Export settings to similar zones
V8.0.1rc1 missing
Please raise an issue on GitLab
It wouldn’t hurt to have it, but it’s somewhat problematic. What is “similar zones”? At least the tooltip tells which settings are not exported. But you don’t know how to use the feature unless you learn by trying or reading about it first and remember it by heart.
Now we have the properties panel for which we can select some zones and change a property for all of them. That hasn’t always been available. There I can see exactly what is being changed.
It was intentionally removed, I guess due to buggy/surprising behavior and the aforementioned properties panel that does its job better.
Maybe the current possibilities could be enhanced. In 8.99 there’s the new Zone Manager (Tools → Zone Manager).
What if it would behave like the Properties panel, and the zone list would allow selecting several zones? And there could be a context menu on the zone list, allowing selecting “similar zones”.
Another, much more simple solution, would be to have and extra menu item in one zone’s context menu, “Select similar zones”. Then the properties panel could be used. This would also allow seeing which zones get selected.
A more general solution – for some other problems, too – would be to have some kind of “find and filter by properties” system. Currently there’s a search panel for simple text search for certain kinds of items which have text, but it’s very limited.
As far as I can see, the only thing missing now from the old “Export to similar zones” is to find and select the “similar zones”. In other respects the Properties panel should do the job.
As I said earlier, the concept of “similar zones” is also the most problematic detail in the old Export function. Even if you know what “similar” means – this could be said in the tooltip – you don’t necessarily remember or have an idea which zones fulfill that definition and which not, especially in a complex design or a design made by somebody else. Therefore the old button has very narrow applicability.
I’m fine if it’s gone for the issue of its ambiguity; I’m dealing with a particularly nasty zone bug and I wanted to make sure my install wasn’t bad (ex : non-appeearing buttons in the zone properties).