PCB select wildcard


I’d like to cleanup the silkscreen…
Is it possible to select all SW* silkscreen text items so I can move them to a non-colliding position? Same with Q???.

You can change the text position in the library footprint and update those footprints from the library.
Tricks like this work best if you first put the footprint in a project specific library and update the links in the schematic symbol to point to this library.

Another possibility is to use **PCB Editor / Edit / Text and Graphics Properties, with settings similar to the screenshot below:

This moves those texts to the User.8 layer, and this makes it easy to select them and manipulate the selection. (And of course put them back on the right layer afterwards).

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Nice workaround!
AFAIR Altium has nice selection filters that could be used for this purpose. I guess sooner or later those will find its way into KiCad as well…

Worked so far, but after this I got a weird crash: Sync Schematic → Layout created a handful of shorts - from connections routed earlier, with really weird connectivity bugs (SOT-23 pins mixed up). KiCad then crashed, after restart PCB restored from autosave and all fine again. I know this is not really helpful, but something does not work here as it should.

Application: KiCad PCB Editor x64 on x64

Version: (7.0.0), release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.1
FreeType 2.12.1
HarfBuzz 5.0.1
FontConfig 2.14.1
libcurl/7.83.1-DEV Schannel zlib/1.2.13

Platform: Windows 10 (build 19045), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW

Build Info:
Date: Feb 12 2023 01:35:19
wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers)
Boost: 1.80.0
OCC: 7.6.2
Curl: 7.83.1-DEV
ngspice: 39
Compiler: Visual C++ 1934 without C++ ABI

Build settings:
KICAD_SPICE=ON

Well, KiCad already has a selection filter, but not so fine grained it could let select only references. But it can combined with the Appearance panel. By showing only the Silk layer you can select only text in that layer.

Using a temporary layer, suggested by Paul, looks like a nice trick. Another possibility is to unset the Visible property. Then you can select and manipulate what is left visible on the board. Maybe that feels a little less hacky for some situations. Then you of course have to set them visible again later.

One neat new feature in v7 is the Properties panel (View → Show Properties Manager). You can rotate all selected texts individually at once with that.

V7 has also a new Search panel (View → …). You can type SW* and show a list of all those switches, then select them by normal Shift + click or Ctrl + click means. Unfortunately the Text tab doesn’t show footprint texts; that would probably be the closest to what you mean by Altium’s filter.

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