In another thread an invisible feature came up, and not necessarily many KiCad users know about it. Please share your tips for features which are not obvious. Here’s the start:
Most fields where you can write a numerical value can take also the unit. So, even when you use mm you can type “6mil”, and it will be converted to the corresponding mm value when you move to the next field. Try this for example in pad properties dialog.
You can even use value fields as simple calculator. For example if the X location of a pad is 48.05mm and you want to move it 2,5mm right, leave the original value there and add “+2.5” so that the field has “48.05+2.5”.
There are two kinds of selection boxes in pcbnew. Drag to right from where you start and it’s yellow. Everything which is completely inside it will be selected. Drag to left and it’s blue; everything which touches it is selected.
Every PCB design software i used so far has this feature. It is extremely helpful if you do not get silk for your board. How else would you put version information on it.
To be honest it is a very basic feature. I would not really consider it hidden. (There is after all a normal sized button for adding text in both pcb new and in the footprint editor. The text properties menu makes it also very obvious that you can put it on any layer you want. Even internal copper is possible.)
It was requested on this forum not that long ago; as it seems to me. Some discussion and Python scripting seemed to make it mostly happen; but it has not long been a standard feature as I recall. I don’t even recall seeing it in the V5 nightlies.
Are we talking about the same thing?
I assume you mean you placed a normal text field (using the T button from the right toolbar) on the copper layer. That was for sure possible in v4 (screenshot is from 4.0.6) I would even guess this was possible in the versions before version 4 (but it is too long ago for me to remember for sure)
If there was a discussion with regard to python then it might just have been that some API stuff was not there to allow more powerful text stuff using python scripts.
There where even complaints here on the forum that kicad does not fill such a copper zone closer to the outline shape of the text placed. (It uses the bounding box instead of the true text shape to calculate the zone clearances)
Need horizontal, vertical and 45 deg lines instead of arbitrary angles? Hold down the Ctrl key while drawing a line. This works with graphic lines and polygon edges.
It seems that there’s a zone property for that, too. But here’s another one for editing an existing zone: drag the middle points of edges, holding down the Ctrl key. It’s not perfect but makes maintaining n*45 deg easier.
(Edit: there’s also an n*45 deg for graphic items in the Preferences, but with the latest code it doesn’t work for me. I’ll try to reproduce and report that.)
And yet another one - I just found this when experimenting while writing this. Let’s say you have selected some items and want to select more. You can select items one by one by holding down the Shift key while clicking with mouse. But if you hold down the Ctrl key, you can make several box selections without loosing the older ones.
The latest self-compiled code, and unfortunately it seems to be non-reproducable. The option to limit degrees seems to work. The Ctrl shortcut works if you don’t have to keep them limited all the time but only sometimes while editing.
If “magnetic” points prevent you doing something, for example moving an existing via or placing a new one nearby another via, hold down Shift while you move the mouse. Works also while routing traces if you have Magnetic Pads.
(Edit: tested with nightly builds; I don’t remember it works in 5.0.)
