Middle button pan

In KiCad 4.0 there was a “middle button pan” option. Is it gone in 5.0?

Is there any other shortcut for panning? Would really like to have a key like Shift or Space for panning.

That setting only changed the behavior of the legacy canvas in v4. The modern toolset simply always uses middle mouse button to pan. In v5 it seems to be at least the default for all toolsets. Not sure if there is still a way to turn it of for legacy from the GUI but i suspect the setting might still exist in the config files.

To be honest my mouse doesn’t have a middle button, I was just wondering how you guys normally pan when using KiCad.

I am personally used to the Space key for panning. Would you be interested in adding this type of functionality if I submit a patch?

It would be useful to have a modifier key for panning. I have a system with Revolution MX mouse which don’t have MMB by default. Trying to pan is a pain (shift+arrows).

The pictures i find for this mouse seem to indicate that it has a mouse-wheel which normally doubles as a button.

In general i wonder why anybody would like to use two hands for this operation but well request it over at launchpad.
I however fear it will take till v6 as including mouse events in the hotkey list seems to be non trivial (indicated at some bug report. Can not remember which one.)


<slight rant>To be honest normally one would expect to have specialized equipment for CAD if one plans to work efficiently. It is after all a tool to make something. In the case of kicad even a 10$ standard logitec/MS/HP mouse would do. 3D CAD software is less forgiving here as a 3d mouse can easily cost a factor of 10 of that if you are a student otherwise nearly a factor of 100. (And if you do not have a 3d mouse you would also require a 3 button mouse at the least. Even with that you will have reduced productivity.) And don’t get me started how much a well equipped mechanical workshop would cost. We electronics engineers really have it cheap.</slight rant>

The space bar resets the reference point for the relative coordinates, I’m not sure how well it would be received if that changed.

I don’t usually pan the canvas at all, I just zoom out and back in with the mouse wheel.

I doubt the request is meant to be read as “make this the standard” but more like “can we please be able to configure this using the hotkey editor”. And a second one “can the hotkey editor support mouse events”. Both valid requests. (In my mind every keyboard interaction should be configurable. And ideally even mouse events. Especially if we want to make kicad accessible to users with different levels of disabilities. There simply will never be a way to support all users with any set of default settings.)

Well if you use proprietary drivers, then it’s possible to do so. By default, clicking on the roller switches between the clicky and free spinning wheel. At least with the BT version.

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