Single track length tuning same length

Hello,

When doing single track length tuning, I must go into “Tuning Pattern Properties” for each track as it does not store the set length for next track. Looking at a Cern video from 9 years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chejn7dqpfQ) it looks like length is set once then all traces after that receives the same setting.

How is this done?

I think it should work fine in latest versions.

9 years ago is ancient history in the KiCad project

Sorry I forgot to mention version. I’m on Windows and had 8.0.5 updated now to 8.0.6

Application: KiCad x64 on x64
Version: 8.0.6, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.6
FreeType 2.13.2
HarfBuzz 9.0.0
FontConfig 2.14.2
libcurl/8.8.0-DEV Schannel zlib/1.3.1
Platform: Windows 10 (build 19045), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
OpenGL: NVIDIA Corporation, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/PCIe/SSE2, 4.6.0 NVIDIA 560.94
Build Info:
Date: Oct 14 2024 01:02:33
wxWidgets: 3.2.6 (wchar_t,wx containers)
Boost: 1.85.0
OCC: 7.8.1
Curl: 8.8.0-DEV
ngspice: 43
Compiler: Visual C++ 1939 without C++ ABI
Build settings:

Can’t see how a feature like setting track length should change over 9 years?

This is going to be fixed in 8.0.7, but also you can set target lengths using DRC rules

See pcbnew: length tuning target length doesn’t apply to multiple nets (#18979) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab

Obviously the codebase is constantly changing as new features get added and bugs get fixed.

Thanks for the update. Will try with DRC rules until its fixe in next update.

That was my point. it should not have changed over 9 years except when a bug is introduced, @davidsrsb makes it sound like you can’t expect fundamental functions to be the same over time.

How do you define “fundamental function” and “to be the same”? There’s no absolute definition for these. For example, between v5 and v6 the major editing paradigm in the schematic editor was changed. How things are selected, moved, etc. can be said to be a “fundamental function”, yet it was radically changed. But only how you do it was changed, not that you can do it. No functionality was taken away.

I’m not talking about length tuning specifically, I don’t know how it works/worked, but you can’t expect it to stay the same over two major versions. If something which was possible or easy before isn’t possible or easy anymore, that would be considered as a bug. But how you do something isn’t the same as being able to do it.

KiCad has developed far more length control and length matching tools. The way that these are calculated has also become far more accurate. Add to that, long ago Schematic and PCB were not integrated or consistent to use.
Inevitably this has changed the user interface

Where from your assumption that such thing should not have changed?

KiCad changes all the time. New features influence other features/tools. For example when we got footprint dragging its side effect is changing many tracks length with one operation.
Are you not able to imagine that after it someone could have written a feature request saying that he has tuned 10 tracks to lengths he wanted (different for each track) and he would like after dragging a footprint be able to correct these lengths back to what they were before but it is waste of time that he has to manually write each track lengths as he has already done it previously. Then KiCad team could decide that he is right and expected track lengths should be saved as individual track parameter and not as length tuning tool parameter.

I read the reply as everything changes/breaks so too bad for you.
Should I assume that every kicad tutorial of version 7 will not work in kicad 8 or can there be a bug introduced?

In this case it actually was a bug so my assumption that a video from 9 year ago was still valid. The video was also linked in forum post on this page from august 2021, so the function or intented function would have been valid 3 years ago.

Everything (in KiCad) changes but toward being better. If some property makes it difficult to introduce new, better functionality, it happens it to be changed.
Before installing KiCad (4.0.6) I have read all KiCad pdfs to then find many inconsistencies. All documentation was only named that it is V4 while most of texts were about V3.
So I got the lesson that many things are changed between each KiCad versions just where I run KiCad for the first time.
During the 3 years that V5 was on the map, there were very frequent questions about some menu items that someone had seen on a V4 video and he can’t find it in V5.

In V5 you were able to fast switch (F9, F11, F12) between:

  • Legacy Toolset,
  • Modern Toolset (Accelerated),
  • Modern Toolset (Fallback).

So 3 years ago (at the end of 2021) this feature was still existing in KiCad, and there were users used to work in Legacy Toolset.
How your assumption that nothing what existed in past should not be gone for at least 9 years relate to KiCad V8 not having Legacy Toolset?
Do you think the only explanation for this option’s disappearance is a bug that will be fixed soon?
Do you miss Legacy Toolset? I don’t.

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The user interface has become fairly stable in the last few versions. Coming from V3 times, almost every menu item got moved in order to get consistent behaviour between the KiCad component applications, which are no longer a collection of separate programs written by different people.