Value of symbols off center when rotated

[FransC]

I am using KiCad for some months now and recently noticed that the value of symbols is not always correctly centered.

In the example are R2 and R4 180° rotated.
You can see that the values of R2 and R4 are slightly off center. The references are also somewhat differently placed.
In printouts this causes the values to hug the lines the symbols are made of.
Is this deliberately to see whether a symbol is rotated or not?
This causes no problems whatsoever but i would find it a lack of beauty.
No offense meant!

Keep up the good works, KiCad is a great program.
Thank You.

[paulvdh]

Same here.
When a resistor is rotated 180 or 270 degrees, the text is slightly off center.

I’m not entirely sure, but I think this has been so for several years, and I usually just only use the 0 and 90 degree rotations.

[FransC]

When one happens to ‘overrotate’ a symbol one gets this.

The pots have it to.
Come to think of it, maybe every symbol where one can place the value inside the symbol.

Would be rather interesting to know what causes this.
The symbols themselves, the symbol editor or the schematic layout editor?

Well, when there’s time to spend…
Go for it!

[john3]

I’ve noticed this as well. The position of the text in the symbol editor doesn’t match that in the schematic, and the positions in the schematic are often inconsistent among different gates of the same part. I’ve seen the text on top of a pin as well. My impression is that if affects all symbols, be they from the library provided or user generated.

IMHO the software should be consistent.

[jmk]

PCB text suffers much the same problem.

I satisfy my OCD by changing the grid to 1mil. and moving the texts for both Schem. and PCB 'till I’m happy with the “appearance”…that way I can sleep at night

[paulvdh]

I am curently working on this thread:

Board Layout without schematic?

Is it possible to layout a board just using footprints without an associated KiCAD schematic? Manually place the traces to interconnect the devices? I’m trying to recreate an old board that I have a schematic for and an old physical board that is not useable but is intact that I can see where all the traces go. It is only double sided, I know there are no hidden layers. I just want to recreate the board layout to get a new copy made without having to enter the whole schematic. Thanks, Tim

After a user question I made a little tutorial for entering netlist information directly into Pcbnew, and that worked pretty well in the latest nightlies, much better then I expected.

However, the next step was to re-create the schematic and make it match with the PCB netlist, and there I bumped into this rotation issue again. The orientation on the PCB is such that you have to put the resistors on the schematic with a 180 degree rotation.

Has anyone who is bothered by this already checked if there is an issue for this on gitlab?

[jmk]

Hi @paulvdh
The OP, I believe, was writing about the change in position/alignment of the text after rotation, not the actual rotation.

I’m not bothered and haven’t checked gitlab as component text always needs moving on schematics and PCBs as far as I’m concerned.

[paulvdh]

Yes indeed.
In the experiment I mentioned, the resistors ended up with pin 2 on top, and to layout the schematic neatly I also put pin 2 on top on the schematic, which is 180 degree rotated from the default, which triggers the offset text.

@jmk

I’m not bothered … as component text always needs moving on schematics and PCBs as far as I’m concerned.

The difference is very small and usually not significant. I measure it as around 0.15mm. It is only with the value text of the resistors that it becomes an issue big enough to pay any attention to. The default position of the resistor value is in the rectangle and that is a perfect place for it to be as long as it is correctly centered, but even the 0.15mm discrepancy is very noticeable in the location of the resistor value.

In normal work flow I just rotate the resistor to normal rotation to avoid this, but because the PCB was already drawn, this would also necessitate rotating the footprints on the PCB.

It’s not an important issue, but non the less it is one of those small annoyances that keeps distracting me.