Partial Selecting, Locking and Moving in PCB

Layout Footprints
1

I am having a fair amount of difficulty laying out the PCB for a “tight” board. There are less than 100 components.
I need to select groups of the footprints and move them omitting a few footprints within the block. I see in another post that one can left-click some footprints to omit them from the group. I am finding that this only selects individual pads but not the complete footprint. I cannot drag the desire footprint to be omitted either. Is this a bug?
I tried locking a few of the footprints and then marking the block and moving. Turns out the locked footprint moves with the block. Thought this should be otherwise-is there a way to Lock footprints so that they remain fixed?
Thanks
Fritz

2

Block selection does not work as well as desired.

You can select a block then hold down the Shift key to add or remove a component by clicking by the item.
Also use the Align feature.

Try turning off silk screen and fab layers to declutter.

3

As long as you keep Shift pressed.

Yes, selecting/deselecting individual footprints is sometimes difficult. You have to click somewhere else than a pad but still inside the footprint’s boundaries. It’s not always very predictable but can be learned, more or less.

One trick is to use the highlight mode to make all but the copper layer inactive. That way you can click on a footprint’s area to select it without activating other items.

You can select a footprint by drawing a selection box on one of its pads, drawing left. But you can’t deselect that way. I don’t know if the lack of ability to deselect is a bug or not, but you can always file a bug report and see what happens.

The selection filter could help you if you are willing to lock/unlock footprints, from context menu->Select.
image

4

I just found out that keeping Ctrl (not Shift!) pressed while drawing an inclusive selection box (left, yellow) on a pad deselects a selected footprint.

5

If you click on the pad then yes you will select the pad this way. You need to click on “empty” space within the footprints area to select the footprint. I personally either click on the fab outline or the courtyard outline. If your footprint has neither of these then it will get quite hard to select.

6

Thanks all. First: I did mean shift-click in my original post. What happen was that I put the phrase “shift” in between greater/equal signs and for some reason this forum editor renders that away. sorry.

I played with this some more and indeed i can de-select complete footprints if they have a lot of empty space. I had been working with 603 resistors so it takes more effort.

Regarding my other issue-is there a way to lock footprints. I know about the lock feature and set it on several footprints but a “M” move still moves them. I also tried unchecking “locked” in the selection filter and that did not work either.

Thanks again
Fritz

7

And now the evident question: what is your KiCad version (which you should have given in the first post)?

Here in 5.1.5 locking footprints and filtering them out from the selection work fine.

1 Like
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sorry—it is: 5.1.4-1
fs

9

Well update to 5.1.5. It only contains bugfixes no other changes were made.

10

  1. Ctrl+left drag: deselect an already selected footprint (doesn’t work with shift).
  2. Filter selection, keep all.
  3. Move selected items (by accident) - KiCad asks for confirmation.
  4. Filter out the locked footprint.
11

OK–I upgraded to 5.1.5-3.

I have some vias used as mounting holes and they are locked.
When I lc-drag a group of footprints including the thruhole, then select the filter and uncheck “include locked footprints” the via still moves.

BTW: The crtl+left drag does work for deselect. Thanks–Fritz

12

Vias aren’t footprints. You could consider using footprints (and maybe symbols, too) for mounting holes - you have more choices that way if you need to tweak the mounting holes, anyways. There are ready made footprints for them in the KiCad library.

1 Like
13

OK–I finally got back to this and found the ‘holes’ in the KiCad libs and replaced my vias… Everything worked fine.

Rene-I upped to 5.1.5 and now things select/move as expected.

Thanks all for the help
Fritz

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