Turn device without wire-contact lost?

hi,
i’m new here (and happy) but i search vor a solution how to turn a device in my shematic while it is connected wihout loos this wires from the pins.

???

thanks
wolfgang :smile:

I think this is not possible.
/Airic

Well I’ve just tried that very same thing. I thought by dragging the component (which still leaves the wires connected) you would then be able to rotate it but no. The wires become disconnected, so I think ( I could be wrong) that you can’t, which seems a little strange to me. I know it can be done in Eagle.

Andy

yes, in Eagle it’s possible, in Target too. But i want to go compleetly to freeware, so i’ll test out this nice KiCAD. Not all has to go as good if some other is better.

Is there a wishlist where i can post my missing feature ?

thanks to you (both) for fast answer

w. :smile:

What is it that you are really asking? I do not understand you.

@nickoe: If you have components placed on a schematic and connected them to other components with wires and then want to rotate one of these components, say by 90 degrees, then you loose all wire connections of this component. Other applications (e.g. EAGLE) keep connections when components are rotated.

…I was using Eagle and never found this to be of any use to be honest. When rotating components, all the tracks will end up crossing each other and basically being routed to the wrong place. So what happens is that you need to delete them and re-route the whole lot (or not delete them but redo them at least). The same is valid for any PCB CAD software including KiCAD and thus there is no added value in keeping the tracks connected. At least that is what I think.

I am sure I am stuck in my habit so can you please explain why you think this would be good to have?
Airic

and i was using target, there it is possible andd nice to have. there is no wrong wire after turning. this feature is not most must have, but i miss it.

thanks, now i know, it’s not possible today, i’m not too stupid.

Airic, I just wanted to explain wbeppler’s question in other words to nickoe. You’re right, most likely there is no benefit in this function. If you haven’t touched the schematic for some time it might prevent you from mixing things up by accident / save you some time to lookup a context you can’t remember. But most of the time, yes, it’s pretty useless.

I just thought a little bit about this and maybe it is not a bad idea to keep the last segments of the tracks connected to the pads of the device. Lets imagine that I have a 8-pin chip that I rotate 180 degrees. Like it is right now in KiCAD, there will be no visible hint that makes clear, the chip was rotated but all pins will effectively be connected to the wrong tracks! A PCB check would fail but still, there is no visual clue to the problem.

But, if the the tracks connected to the chips pins would stay connected, we’d have some cluttered tracks going wild all around the chip. This would be a clear indication that something is definitely wrong.

So +1 for this feature.

/Airic

I always thought that if you rotate a component when it is connected with wires, even if you rotate it 180 degrees the wires would still be disconnected. ie you would have to connect them again. I maybe totally wrong on this mind you. But I’ll double check it.

I agree though, it would be a useful feature to have in Kicad

Andy

no, they will be connected back on the wrong pins after 180° rotation, I’ve just tested.

That’s good to know.

so its enough discussion to know that ist is not possible to turn a device in shematic without a lot of work.

who knows (and say me) where i can send my wish-list to the KiCAD programmer-team ?

thanks for active thread

I am not sure if there is such a thing as a “wish list”. I guess the best place to start looking is here: http://www.kicad.org/display/DEV/KiCad+Development

…on the other hand, are some of the developers maybe active in this forum?

/Airic

Having been a long time Eagle user i think it would be nice to have the wires attached while transforming components. I understand the when rotating components the wires can criss cross, but even then its easier to relocate the components as opposed to re-attached wires. Maybe an idea would be to have this as an option in the preferences. i.e. "Maintain wire connections while transforming components ? (yes/no)

I also very miss this feature, not only because of rotating but moving device around the schematic. This is really very annoying when I need to reconnect all wires after a little movement of the element. This is the only reason I still keep using Eagle instead of KiCAD.

The wires do stay connected when you drag the component instead of “moving” it.

Yes ‘G’ will keep connections.

For those asking for ‘R’ to also be active during ‘G’, yes, that could be useful on simple parts (2 pin), but there are downsides:

kiCad SCH currently live-connects part pins to wire corners, which auto-reconnects after a rotate 180 for example.

Keeping connects on rotate of a more complex part, would risk unintended attach, as well as needing a cleanup anyway.

If I wanted to rotate an existing complex part, I’d tend to copy/swap then move/spin the original, manually connect new XYR, using the original copy as a check, and finally delete original.

Trying to clean-up any spun-connected-mangle, with no references, would have too much risk of wrong results.

Please be aware:
I think people in the old thread were mixing layout and schematic without differentiating between the two.