I’m a fairly experienced Kicad user, but I must be missing something regarding how the PCB editor decides where to snap the cursor. Sometimes it acts the way I want, and other times it seems to have a mind of its own. I’m sure the problem is me, so if you could set me straight I’d appreciate it.
The video below is an example from today. I’m trying to create a fill zone on L2, and the fill zone contains an arc. I created an arc on the user.drawings layer to use as a template. I’m manually moving points from the fill zone onto the arc to trace its curvature.
I was able to position a few points correctly, but others stubbornly snap to locations off the arc - despite turning off all snapping (grid, pads, tracks/vias & graphics). I have tried separately holding down the shift key and the control key while moving the point, but to no avail.
What am I missing?
(At the end of the video when attempt to move the points, the first attempt is just me selecting the point with my mouse & trying to move it onto the arc. Then I try again holding down the shift key, and finally I try again holding down the control key. In all three cases the point snaps to some location off-arc.)
Thanks for the help!
Steve
P.S. If there are better ways to create an arced fill zone, feel free to suggest them. But my main focus is getting the snapping question answered. I’ve had similar problems in the past and I would really like to know what I’m doing wrong.
If the grid setting is greater than the area of movement the program
may ‘snap by default’ to the size setting even with snap to grid off.
Try reducing the grid setting to minimum 0.39 mils (0.0100mm)
You can reset the grid as desired afterwards.
Thanks for the suggestions - I do appreciate it. I will keep my eyes open for RC 9.0.6. In the meantime I just shrank the grid & positioned the points. I think that’s probably what I’ve done in the past as a work-around. Somehow I’ve always managed to get the points where I wanted them, but more than once it involved a lengthy trial-and-error session with the snap settings. Yesterday I finally had enough and thought, “I need to get to the bottom of this. What am I missing?!”
Thanks for pointing me to the release candidates. I had been looking in the wrong place. I was looking under the nightly builds & didn’t see anything with “rc” in the name.
I installed the 9.0.6 release candidate & now the snapping is working as expected.
In the video below I show the following in the order listed. (I had to move sort of fast so the video memory wouldn’t exceed the allowable upload size.)
When all snapping is disabled, no snapping occurs.
When snapping is enabled, snapping does occur.
When snapping is enabled, it can be disabled on the fly by holding the CTRL key as I move the point.
Well, the plot thickened. I thought RC 9.0.6 was working properly, but now I don’t think so. Below is a video of me trying to measure the center-to-center distance between two pads. You can see that even with pad snapping on, the cursor doesn’t snap to the center of the pads like it should.
I also tried measuring from corner to corner of a courtyard. Again there are problems. All snapping is turned on, yet the cursor snaps to odd locations.
I might try to back-track revisions. I’ve never done that before but I’m assuming past revs are available & just as easy to install. If so, I’ll try going back to the last revision where snapping seemed to operate properly.
For anyone who’s never gone back to a previous release, just go to kicad.org, click on Downloads –> Windows, & scroll down until you see “Previous releases”. I’m assuming it’s similar for Mac & Linux.
It appears your pads are not centred on the grid. It may be easier for you to see if you changed your grid (in Display Options) from dots to lines temporarily.
Don’t forget, you have set your tool to snap to grid, not pad centres.
Your measuring is working in 9.0.4 because there was bug I reported that placed footprints off grid, so the tool is snapping to this off grid position. This was fixed, but any footprints you placed in 9.0.4 (or maybe earlier, I’m not sure) will still be off grid in 9.0.6rc1 (unless you have moved them), so the measuring tool (in 9.0.6rc1) is snapping to the nearest grid position to your footprint.
The easiest way to test this is to go to 9.0.6rc1, place a new footprint somewhere out of the way of your board work and test to see if the measuring tool now works correctly.
I hope this explanation is a little clearer than mud.
FWIW, 9.0.4 has snapping issues, too. Sometimes the cursor won’t snap to the grid even when grid snapping is set to ‘always’ and all other snapping is set to ‘never’.
In the video below I’m trying to locate the corner of a keepout 15 mils up & 15 mils over from the point where a track takes a bend. I put the grid origin at the center where two track segments meet. I set the grid spacing to 5 mils, thinking I’ll go three clicks up & three clicks over. As you can see, the cursor snaps to off-grid locations.
BTW, I changed the grid display to ‘lines’ to make the grid easy to see in the video.
It’s weird because sometimes the snapping behavior seems to act correctly, and other times it responds like what you see above.
Anyway, from the forum it looks like others are having various types of snapping issues, too. I guess I’ll just keep an eye on things until there’s a release that fixes it.
Also, I wanted to take a second to thank the folks who are working on Kicad. I appreciate all your hard work. It’s a great tool.
The snapping/constraint behaviour is so aggressive and unpredictable at the moment, that I’ve developed a bit of a habit of holding shift while I move - that seems to turn off all alignment/stepping behaviour.
