Lol definitely agree - not sure how many times I have changed the grid and didn’t notice till later, going from like 25 mil to 10 mil then things not lining up. What would be nice actually would be a fit to grid function - you highlight all components/traces/text on a sheet and just essentially quantizes to the current grid.
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So, what you need is gridlock? 
I had no idea this was a thing! My life is forever changed.
I wish there was a tutorial to step thru each default hotkey (especially for newbies), as I am lazy and hate reading manuals
My limited experience using several versions of V6.x and shortcut keys (aka hotkeys) revealed that there were extremely useful, relatively few and easy ones to remember. I’d have to agree that remembering more than 15 as a septuagenarian is comparable to the old fortune telling “8 Ball” landing on “8 Ball says: Outlook is doubtful”.
I’m so glad to hear there are others who think similarly.
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I also vote for eliminating the N shortcut from the schematic editor.
I have several messed up schematics because of accidently pressing N.
On top of - why would anyone want to change the grid in schematic - comes that N is right next to the most used shortcut M (for move) and gets pressed pretty often by mistake. As there might be some obscure use cases of changing the grid in schematic, I wouldn’t remove the option forever, but the N shortcut is certainly the worst place it could be in the entire GUI.
On a side note: Often I accidently press some key (not only KiCad, Altium is equally hotkey-heavy) and wonder… uuuups - what did I do right now? And how can I undo that? A keypress history (in the help menu) would help here, recording say the last 10 keypresses (including the actions associated with them).
In case I missed it: Is there a place where I can vote for “eliminate N”?
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If you do that your name becomes marti.
But seriously, I think the OP or anybody else can start a poll post.
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Voting may be a strong word for what you can do, but there is a gitlab issue here that you can give a thumbs up to support or write up a comment.
This is mostly a forum by users for users, while there are developers here the main Decisions mostly get made on the gitlab. In the end, the lead development team will make the call on it though.
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Just did that… let’s see what happens.
There are Undo and Redo last edits up the top of the page. They are under tools in Schema. Similar place in PCB. They can often help.
Many keypresses (like N) change settings, which are unaffected by undo.
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You’re right, sorry I forgot.
I also read your comment on Gitlab.
You haven’t forgotten N is a common key in use on all four editors?
Sigh.
I guess there’s no easy or perfect solution.
As you hint at, consistent operation over all GUIs is important.
Maybe lock grid to 50 mil for wires and components - I honestly see no reason why one should place components or wires otherwise.
Text or graphics: Why not have other grids.
Maybe look at LTSpice:
Components are always placed on the grid, which is fixed (no units or settings AFAIK).
Text can be placed at half grid points.
That’s it. Works perfectly!
Now that is a good idea. As pointed out in this thread, settings keystrokes are not “Undone”
Maybe lock grid to 50 mil for wires and components - I honestly see no reason why one should place components or wires otherwise.
On gitlab there were already users with very different grids.
These originated either from import from other cad-systems or from a decision a long time ago where they decided to standardize on different (maybe metric?) grids.
Or they created symbols with especially small pin-distance to save space. I have seen for instance SPI-busses drawn as 4 wires with very little space between them.
So while I (and you) can live with a restricted 50mil grid (my libraries are even more coarse - 100mil pin distance on symbols) this restriction would surely hit some others.
So the developers have the hard task to decide which part of the users can be pleased and which are disappointed.
A made a comment on Gitlab after @Martinn suggesting shipping Kicad with only 50mil for Schematic, but being able to add other grids as required.
This solves the problem for the unwary and those who want more grids can create them and watch out for N.
Personally I’d be very pleased to be able to scroll with N from 50 to 10 to 1mil in Schema and Symbol Editors.
As I mentioned wayyy up, I assigned Alt + N to Grid Settings to make it easy for me to habitually check my grid in use.
Do we NEED a prominent user facing grid in 2023?
Here me out.
The only REAL need (to us the user) for a grid based layout system, is to produce a nice looking schematic by having wires with certain spacings and components etc aligned is it not y/n?
KiCad doesn’t ‘care’ what the schematic looks like just that certain points (internally) have duplicated values indicating a connection. The latter using a grid probably helps the Devs and their coding algorithms and probably implemented historically for performance reasons back in the day
So therefore can we agree, in principle, that we the user only NEEDS to be aware of the grid size for asthetic reasons - or clarity say when printing out a schematic?
Therefore, could we not have an AutoCad esq ‘Object Snap’ function, utilising an attract (connection) point on components with a bounding box on the cursor when wiring up or placing a label
Using a wire and component as an example - With the component already placed on screen and we in wire mode (w hotkey) move the cursor and it’s box over a components connection point and just click the mouse button. The wire immediately connects to the component and the grid spacing setting is also involved ready for the wire to be drawn. When thebox is over the targets connection point just click again the wire connects and the s within the cursor box via mouse) that then joins oins the two points then invokes the snapping to grid function to draw the wires on the grid spacing.
The connection crosses on components is an example of a point that could become ‘magnetic’ half the work is already done !!!
This would vastly increase the user experience, quicken wiring, eliminate errors associated with wrong grid sizes and do away with the requirement of the n hotkey completely in the Schematic Editor.
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In principle I think I agree . . . but this would probably be a major change in terms of coding for the schematic editor and would probably make the developers cry. Don’t hold your breath . . .
Gridless schematic has been discussed, I think many times. Actually by the developers themselves, so they know and understand that a schematic doesn’t really need a grid. But whether it’s worth implementing is a different matter.
I am so happy I came across this thread, I thought I was losing my mind the past week. I switch keyboards often and I am not that accurate of a typist in the first place, and I started having issues with a particular schematic. At first, I thought something was changed in KiCad 7 that made the “hit box” for connecting wires together way smaller than it had been before. I have never needed or wanted to change the grid size in the schematic editor. I had no idea that “n” would change the gride size.
I have since remapped that button.
While I’m on the subject of hotkeys can we PLEASE get some better organization into the hotkey manager? They are not in any order that makes sense to me and even the categories are not always very helpful.
Wouldn’t hurt to up-vote the relevant feature requests:
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