Ratsnest / sticky wires for schematic?

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I’ve spent a few days creating a schematic by reverse engineering a PCB from a retro computer from the 80’s.

The schematic while technically correct now is a big mess and hard to read as it was difficult to plan where to put symbols from the reverse engineering. Lots of wires are crossing.

I want to know clean and neaten up the schematic and am wondering if there is a feature that allows the wires to be used like a rats nest (Something like sticky wires?)

If I start moving symbols around I’m afraid I will lose track of what connects where and don’t want to repeat the reverse engineering process.

Is there an easy way to do this? (The only way I can think of otherwise is to print off the schematic and really start from scratch which is not ideal)

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You know the difference between Move a symbol (hotkey “M”) and drag a symbol (hotkey “G”) ?

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Thanks. All these years using KiCad and I never knew about the drag key :rofl:

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Sometimes I’d bring up the hotkey shortcut help window and just study it and leave it up.

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Dragging in schematics is a bit tricky in KiCad. I invite detail corrections to this:

  1. Generally if you want to drag a group of symbols, you need to be careful with the wires that connect that dragged group to the rest of the schematic.
  2. The difficulty is that selected wires act with fixed length that push and pull instead of rubberbanding. Wires that are not selected do rubberband when they interconnect selected dragged and (not dragged) symbols.
  3. Selecting a group rectangle from the lower right to upper left includes all symbols that are even partially in the rectangular selection group. I almost always select a group that way.
  4. Deselecting can be done by clicking with SHIFT+CTRL. This is very useful.

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I prefer to not have KiCad drag unless I hit the G key.

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