Lock an "easyMove" Footprints

Layout Footprints
1

Hi there,
i am doing the first board with “Application: kicad Version: (5.0.0), release build” and noticed that i (now?) can move even Pads of Footprint, by highlighting the pad and than entering the coordinate after pressing “e”. I did this several times before i noticed that i actually move the pad itsself and not the whole footprint.
This seems odd, can i stop PCBnew from even offering changes to Footprints when not in the Footprint editor, or at least somehow “lock” it? I fear a careless move could change a footprint without me noticing it.
In the v4.7 i believe there was also a mode which locked the footprint designators and so on to its position relative to the footprint, i cant find that button anymore (if it ever existed), is it gone?

Thanks in advance
Detzi

1 Like
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I can confirm this behavior for Kicad 5.0.1.
You can also change pad sizes, pad shapes, pad holes, …

I may very well be missing something, but it seems like a serious bug to me.

3

At the moment in nightly builds it’s not even possible to select a single pad of a locked footprint, so it’s can’t be changed by accident. But if only pads are locked they still can be changed. There was some developer discussion about it IIRC. Finer grained locking would be good. But why the current 5.0 behavior is a “serious bug”? Just don’t edit a single pad, select the whole footprint if you need to move the footprint. Footprint properties are footprint properties, pad properties are pad properties. I have never felt this is a problem.

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If you will allow me to answer this as a point of view:

  • When in the pcb editor I do not expect to be able to edit footprints. Especially since there is a dedicated footprint editor.
  • If footprint editing is allowed in the pcb editor I would expect a locking feature, locked by default. And a clear indication when unlocked.
  • I am just getting used to the Kicad way of hovering your cursor over, or selecting, an element and press a key. Without this topic I could easily have overlooked making changes that faulted my board.
  • Footprints take up most of my time and faulty footprints, together wit Gerber files, seem to be considered the top reason for faulty boards. So the possibility of footprints changing while lay-outing makes me nervous.

I do however understand that people have different points of view and backgrounds. Rather than entering a yes/no discussion, I would be very interested in reading up on the Kicad design decisions and the rationale behind them.
Can’t seem to find them though. Any hints?

2 Likes
5

I agree in every point with you, couldn’t have said it better. So I filed a Bug report

But has someone an idea for a workaround?

this describes it quite well. Therefore i would be glad to be able to “Lock” the Footprint.

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