Zoom in/out to where the cursor is, center the viewport to that point
Zoom in/out to where the cursor is, center the viewport to that point, teleport the cursor there
Zoom in/out relative to the center of the viewport
Zoom in/out relative to the center of the viewport, teleport the cursor there
<i don’t even>
0voters
When you’re holding an object (while moving), or when drawing wires/tracks or graphical lines, zones, polygons … and you go near the edge of the viewport:
Do nothing, i’ll pan the viewport if i want to
Start moving the viewport to expose more area in that direction, untill i back off the mouse
Move the viewport to expose more area in that direction in a more significant jump, then teleport the cursor to the center (so it ends up effectively in the same coordinates where it was before the jump)
You can change the behaviour in: KiCad / Preferences / Preferences / Common / Pan and Zoom / [ ] Center and warp cursor on zoom
In the beginning I also got annoyed by KiCad’s behavior, and it was for a few very understandable reasons:
It works differently from what most programs do.
I did not really understand what was happening (cause I was not used to this behavior)
Therefore I did not understand how to use this function effectively.
I also had never really focused on this behavior nor thought about it. It was just a deviation from what had become my intuitive way of working. Then I read a post about it here on this forum, and I decided to give it some conscious effort instead of turning it off immediately.
Then I realized that it is a very fast and handy way of navigating through a board, and it has become the only way I use for panning and zooming through the PCB. You simply first move the mouse in the direction you want to go, then zoom either in or out one click, depending on if you want more detail or overview, and the area of interest is in the center of the monitor.
Every time I have not used KiCad for some time (months), and start using it again it takes a few minutes to get used to it, but in the end it’s worth it for me because it works better & faster then the way most other programs work.
KiCad developers are (of course) aware that it’s a bit different from what most programs do, but they use it as default to give more people a chance to get used to this method. If the “Warp and Zoom Cursor on Zoom” was turned off by default, very few people would ever try to turn it on long enough to get used to it, as the initial reaction is to get “annoyed”.
Changing the behaviour when zooming makes it feel a bit more natural for me, thanks. But the more annoying mouse teleportation issue for me is when closing a dialog box and the mouse jumps back to where it were when the dialog was opened. What usually happens is that I try to move the mouse manually at the same time which makes end up farther from the target. I can see that this function is intended to be helpful, but as long as every other application works the other way, it will just feel weird. Not that it is a showstopper for me in any way, just one of those quirks that makes KiCad feel a little weird.
