Hi - long time KiCad user, but first time making a board in KiCad 6.
I copied a project made in KiCad 5 and opened in KiCad 6 and all was going swimmingly until I started trying to rearrange my SMD components. For some reason, I see the clearance outline around through hole pads, but not around SMD pads.
As far as I can tell, this setting should be controlled in PCB Editor via Preferences > Preferences > Display Options > “Show pad clearance” checkbox. However, for me, this only toggles the through hole clearance outlines and not the SMD clearance outlines. Image should be embedded below.
Alright that was strange - restarted KiCad with no change, then restarted computer and it had the same behavior at first. Then as soon as I tried routing a trace the outlines came back and are now here to stay even when not routing. So problem solved.
Yeah, did “save” at the beginning. I think it was just something strange on my PC / this board. Restarting my computer and KiCad seemed to semi fix it, though it was intermittently working / not working. If the clearance outline ever turned off, routing to an SMD pad would turn it back on (and the clearance outline would remain even after I exited routing mode). So problem solved, but strange.
Weird things like this are often small bugs that only manifest themselves only in very specific situations.
If you are able to reproduce this and make a test case for it on gitlab, then you can help with making KiCad better.
I have a video showing the behavior, but I’m not able to upload it due to being a new user. Essentially, the clearance outlines disappear after placing a via. Starting a new track causes them to reappear.
This behavior is a difference between KiCad 5 and 6. 5 shows SMD outlines regardless of the active layer, while 6 shows SMD outlines only for the active layer.
