Layer swap seems to remove zones

[Kenneth_MacCallum]

Hi everyone, I’m using 7.0.10 to do a 6 layer PCB.

I just tried to swap the contents of two inner layers, to change the layer stackup order. I used the “Swap Layers…” dialog and it sort of worked - except all the zones that were enabled for those layers seem to be deleted.

I have a bunch of zones, some of which exist on just a few layers and some on all layers. All zones that were enabled for the layers I was trying to swap disappeared completely. The zones that only were enabled for other layers are still there.

Am I misunderstanding something? Is this a feature? Cheers.

[paulvdh]

I did a simple test but could not repeat it.

Before: 6 layer PCB with zones in order (Red, Green, Orange, etc):

After swapping In1.Cu and In2.Cu, the order is: Red, Orange, Green, etc:

… So Green and Orange have swapped. Do note though that right after the swap, the zones are not filled anymore. You have to press the b key to re-generate internal zone geometry.

[Kenneth_MacCallum]

Huh. Thanks for trying. The zones I had (that disappeared) spanned multiple layers. They sure seemed gone - the outlines were not shown. Only the tracks survived. If I window-select with only zones enabled in my selection filter I get nothing.

I’ll see if I can make a stripped down test file.

[Kenneth_MacCallum]

I did a quick test file but it works fine, like you found. Rats - there must be something extra-special about my PCB then.

[paulvdh]

KiCad makes automatic backups in the “backup” directory in your project, which you can use for various purposes. The most obvious is of course to recover a (complex) zone outline. If you’ve done considerable editing after the last backup, it is possible (but a bit fiddly) to merge a zone outline from an older version into the latest version of the project.

Another possibility is to try if this deleting of zones is repeatable. It is possible that you discovered a real bug that only manifests itself in some situations. If it is repeatable, then the KiCad developers are very much interested in a (simplified) version of your project to track down and fix the bug. There is also a possibility to pen a confidential issue on gitlab, and this gives only some hand selected develeopers access to that topic.

[Kenneth_MacCallum]

Thanks Paul. I’ll keep this simmering. I’m also trying to get my board done and ordered so there will be some balancing there. I already bailed on this strategy and manually selected my traces and changed their layer. The zones were all selected on both layers so they didn’t need to change. Not quite as awesome as using the made-for-purpose swap layers action but got the job done.

I’ll try stripping this down to a bare-minimum layout that still exhibits this behaviour in the next few days.