Apologies for the post here, but this one is driving me mad…
With 5.0.0-rc3 on debian (debian package or flatpak) I cannot find the icon to select footprint mode, even though it’s mentioned in the bundled documentation. It’s just not there, whether I select ‘legacy’ or ‘modern’ toolset (is that how we switch opengl off now? there’s nothing I can see in the view menu).
I used to use Glob tools a lot, but haven’t used KiCad for years… where have they all gone?!
What do you mean by “footprint mode”? The footprint editor? It can be opened from the project window->Tools menu, with the corresponding tool button and from the board editor with the similar looking tool button.
sorry, what used to be called ‘mode footprint’, and was selected with an icon like ‘place footprint’ except it had a pair of crossed axes over the ‘footprint’. In ‘mode footprint’ it was possible to right-click footprints and chose glob move and place> something.
The documentation (at least locally) still thinks it exists; I’ll find a screenshot.
If you use the modern accelerated canvas (OpenGL) - which is recommended - there’s no need for such mode. You just grab a footprint which is in the board and drag it. Or select a footprint, click M and arrow keys. Select several by keeping Shift down while clicking the mouse button. They can be moved together. Isn’t the new 5.0 wonderful…
The footprints are distributed automatically when the netlist is read so that they don’t cover each other, there should be no need for the old “automatic distribution”.
There is also the Align and distribute option. (I hope this is also in v5 as i am running a nightly of shortly after the v5 tag)
move one footprint out of your mess, select your mess plus the one you moved out, right click -> align and distribute -> distribute horizontally or distribute vertically (depends on where you put the “reference” footprint)
oh great! thank you.
Last thing—is there still a basic autorouter, and if so where?
Also the docs are a little behind…
Thanks all.
No the autorouter died in translation. (Some incompatibilities killed it)
There is however the external freerouting if your really must use it. But remember never trust the auto router
oh certainly, I don’t 
But I’m currently laying up a basic display board which is just a load of connections to a header—even autorouters can handle that. Halfway through though, now that you (all) pointed me to align and distribute—thank you!
Actually you can only move footprints in OpenGL not grab/drag… which is one of the things I find missing in it.
What do you mean? I was a bit unexact: you may have to click the footprint first to select it, but then you can move it with mouse by pressing and keeping down the button and moving the mouse. Or do you mean something else?
grab/drag as it existed in the legacy canvas (brings attached wires along with it) does not exist in the OpenGL canvas only move. Move is also a bit harder to select the part if there are overlapping parts in the OpenGL canvas than legacy also much better than the previous revision of the OpenGL canvas though.
With move it will often misselect what I want to to move. Ie I mouse over a footprint hit M and it selects the component name or value instead of the footprint or one of the pad’s instead of the whole footprint to move, which seriously hampers workflow.
I don’t understand how someone would find the old-style dragging useful, but you can vote and comment on https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1743099.
I agree that selecting a whole footprint is often clumsy. Maybe something could be done, but it’s difficult to find logic which would work well for all users and use cases. I suppose finding behavioral logic is here more difficult than implementing it (for an experienced developer).
I think a way forward might to be have g grab footprints only, and m move all item types… thats more similar to how it worked before for me at least. I don’t think g does anything at the moment on the OpenGL canvas.
It’s still mapped to drag … but it doesn’t do anything. And actually I almost never used move on the legacy canvas almost alway drag… so to each their own. With dragging you often don’t have to redraw your traces…
Also another annoyance is move, moves the selected part, not the part you are over… this means you have an extra click at least you have to make in the new canvas. Drag/move works on the part you are over in the Legacy canvas… making moving things around very quick.
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