Kicad slow to use...any tips on speeding up?

Hi,
When i am editring in schem editor, the mouse seems to move slowly, when i select a sub-circuit , it doesnt select straight away, everything seems kind of delayed and in slow motion…including the connecting of nets, etc. Do you know how i can speed it up?. I am a transferring eagle pro user, not using that any more as kicad is getting more common in co’s.

What is your kicad version?

There must be something wrong with the setup, because Kicad runs reasonably swiftly on even early Core I5 machines. Provide more info on your setup: machine specs, OS, kicad version, etc.

Make it Core 2 Duo from 2008 :slight_smile:

What OS, how much RAM, what graphics card?

Indeed I have had a similar experience with various nightly builds 5.99 on Windows 10 (in contrast to 5.1.6, about three months ago), not caring about any settings, just installing and running Eeschema.

I have had a i9 with 32G of main memory, but without graphics card, just Intel’s on board graphics (a C program development machine for ngspice). Only installing an extra graphics card (NVIDIA 1650) helped immediately, again without tinkering with any settings.

So it might be wise to get a hint or a link to which settings might be optimized, if the machine is not optimized (even if this has already been provided elsewhere).

Me to, until recently I used a Dualcore from that era with a Passmark rating of 1500 and KiCad run just fine, even with 4GB RAM.

Using the acceleration of your video card is a noticeable difference:
Preferences / Modern Toolset (Accelerated)

There are some known issues with video cards that do not work nicely with KiCad:


(Weird, I thought there were some issues with some graphics cards on the link above, but the seem to have disapeared (maybe the bugs are fixed?)

I’ve experienced something like this as well… it’s not exactly running slowly like most apps do when the CPU is overloaded, but that if you move the mouse quickly you can “outrun” your clicks, so that e.g. a drag selection box misses the object you were trying to pick.

Time to upgrade that hand cranked Pentium. :rofl:

You are most likely being confused by the fact that dragging a selection box left, vs. dragging right actually selects differently
Crossing vs. window selection.

KiCad performance issues on non-Unix platforms are always mysteries. On my R5-3500U the schematics is also unreasonably slow under Windows, even on accelerated toolset. Linux however has no issues at all. Remember, this integrated GPU is capable of handling Blender Eevee render with even higher complexity. AFAIK, this is a highly PC related issue.

If developers weren’t capable of locating the real issue source then there always must be one who need to do it. I don’t think they had experienced such issues, though.

Are you having this experience with the latest KiCad nightlies? I have been quashing bad behavior built into KiCad for Windows. Most of it is pretty smooth now (for me at least) with only one odd ball behavior on my radar to murder.

I backported some of the fixes into KiCad 5.1.7 and 5.1.8 (out soon, this week maybe?) but other performance hits remain.

I would guess something is going on with your computer - i run it one some very old machines (mostly macs) going back 12 years and its “fine”. Is this a new install or was it working well once?
G

As to Core 2 Duo, Me 3 - Macbook Pro 2009.

Now, as to graphics acceleration: yes, its nice. But not required. I also have two machines that i salvaged with failed graphics cards. Upon hacking Unix so that it didnt see those failed cards, they now permanently boot to using the cheap-O internal intel graphics. A bit slow for 3D viewing but aside from that NP.

G

Another annoyance that’s present in 5.1.7 and contributes to an appearance of slowness… if you’re in wiring mode on the schematic, starting a wire happens on the LMB release, not button down. So if you click and start moving your mouse immediately, you often miss the pin you were clicking on and start a wire in the middle of space.

@halachal
When I push [LMB] in Eeschema and move the mouse before releasing the button, I always get the box select function. Even when I’m in “wiring mode”.

This is in KiCad V5.1.8 though. Just got updated yesterday.

[Edit:]
When there is a short time between pushing and releasing [LMB] I can indeed trigger a condition where the wire is started at the release of [LMB] and can imagine this to be slightly annoying for some people, but it has not bothered me personally.

Same on 5.1.7, and never found it awkward to use.

It depends on how long you hold down the button. If it’s fast enough you won’t get the box select.

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