When in PCBNew (and in eeschematic as well) when I want to zoom a layout the point where the mouse is is not kept as the centre, even more it jumps around until it settles and only then the scroll wheel more or less does what I expect. Can this be set or is this just the way KiCAD works?
Now as I look more into it. The first tick on the mouse wheel actually centres the cursor to the centre of the screen and moves the layout so the point the cursor was first placed is now at the centre of the screen, that’s what I refer to as jumping around, this is very confusing
KiCad has a controversial feature where it allows you to pan and zoom at the same time. I personally think it is a very good feature once one gets used to it but if you find it too disorientating then you can turn it off in the common section of the preferences dialog (The setting is called “center and warp on zoom”)
Yeah “center and warp”. As a non-native english speaking person I would never have guessed you call that warp. Thanks for the tip that fixed it for me.
When I noticed it first time I thought - it is genius solution - why other programs are so stupid that they don’t work that way. Using only wheel I can easily reach view as I need. In other programs to make a needed view (using only zooming (zooming wheel)) I have to find the point at which to start zooming to get the picture right move at once I need (I never find that point at first try).
The other way is to do zooming and then moving - I found myself each time to experiment if I have to use Shift or Ctrl to move (simple click+move could be good, but it is frequently used to start selection).
I’ve had other programs where you can zoom with the scroll wheel, and they often use the location of the mouse cursor as a center point for the zoom operation. I really liked this, because you can use for both zoom and pan at the same time.
KiCad’s way is superior to this though.
For example: Imagine you want to zoom in a bit on the left side of the screen.
In the other programs I usually first moved the mouse cursor to the right, zoomed out a few steps to get the area of interest near the center of the screen and then zoomed in in that area.
With KiCad you simply move the mouse cursor tho the area of interest and zoom in, and KiCad puts that area in the center of the screen. It does take some time to get used to this though, and it may be confusing at the beginning. It might be less confusing if it had an animated way of doing this, but animations are usually slow and I do not like them for that reason. Animations are also a performance issue on very big or complex PCB’s.
Turning off Preferences / Preferences / Common / Pan and Zoom / [ ] Center and warp cursor on zoom does indeed revert to the more common way of zooming.
KiCad’s Center and warp method is a bit annoying because it looks less intuitive in the beginning. If you are willing to get used to it there is a big chance you do not want to go back.