Is this a bug that I should report, or is this the intended and expected behavior? I’m using 7.0.8-43-ge6e29b6c4c
When I’m placing my footprints, I’m usually selecting the footprint I want to move, then I press M to move it and move it into place. When doing this, I almost always (99% of the time) want to grab the footprint by the coordinate origin point (anchor) of the footprint. To get it to work as I want, I’m using these preferences:
Common → Editing → Warp mouse to origin of moved object: Checked
PCB Editor → Magnetic Points → Snap to pads: When creating tracks (can be set to Never, but it doesn’t make a difference)
Even though these preferences are set, if Pads are selected in the Selection Filter, the mouse cursor will still snap to the nearest pad of the footprint when I press M (unless the coordinate origin point (anchor) of the footprint is closer than all the pads).
It took me a while to find that the Selection Filter impacts the snapping. To me that’s not that intuitive.
So the question is short. Bug or intended behavior?
I think intended. But who needs it - don’t know. It bothers me a lot and I don’t know the good solution for it (Selection filter is not good solution).
All my footprints have courtyard in 0.1mm grid and I work with 0.1mm grid placing footprints touching each other with their courtyards. Pads are not in 0.1mm grid so whenever it happens to me to move footprint by pad it makes a mess and then I have to fix it.
During first ‘global’ positioning I can have pads unselected. But then is the phase of real design when you find final positions for footprints and then route some tracks and move next few footprints and route next few tracks and so on. I can’t switch off pads in selection as tracks don’t snap to them. So I have to fix footprint positions many times (I don’t remember this problem in V5). Sometimes I notice wrong position after I have routed several tracks.
I would be happy if grabbing for Move by anything else just the footprint anchor could be switched off.
Sorry for being misleading.
I was writing from home where (Win7) I don’t have KiCad V7 to check it.
I was sure that assumption I made is correct but it wasn’t
The problems I described actually happened to me because I hadn’t discovered Selection Filter yet when I last did something more serious in KiCad.
And when I found it I still (till today) was sure that I had to have Pads being on in Selection to route.
I was so sure that I didn’t checked it.
So, it sounds like we all agree that the current functionality is pretty good if you know about it. The problem I see is that it’s not intuitive (IMHO) and wasn’t easy for me or Piotr to find…
Even though I have nothing against the feature now that I know about it, it still feels like a bug to me that it still snaps to the pads of the footprint when moving it, even though these preferences are set:
Common → Editing → Warp mouse to origin of moved object: Checked
PCB Editor → Magnetic Points → Snap to pads: When creating tracks
