Why does Eeschema ever do anything other than rubberband wires?

I think that move does not need to be elastic, but it should disconnect the wire when it is moved away.
I think that drag should be elastic. In my comparison with ExpressPCB it is the junctions, end points and symbols which are dragged; not the wires. Wires should rubberband and just follow the end points when dragging.

I would have thought there would be more complaints about the oblique rubberbanding! (rather than orthogonal which is my preference)

Not sure what you mean by oblique; do you mean diagonal? ExpressPCB drags as I drag it. My example had neither room nor need to drag. And if I had saved my schematic as I left it after dragging, I would have seriously screwed it up. I was just showing how I can drag, then add or subtract from the selection and drag some more. Of course I would almost always want to drag orthogonally. I would not usually want diagonal wires after dragging but that was what I could do easily in that demo with lack of space. A small number of diagonal wires resulting is usually easy to fix.

oblique
/əˈbliːk/
adjective
1.1. neither parallel nor at right angles to a specified or implied line; slanting.

Apparently the implied lines here are horizontal and vertical.

Orthogonal is sometimes used meaning “either horizontal or vertical”, although it techically means lines at right angles (not depending on their angle relative to the coordinate system).

Eeschema has this option:

image

And if that’s not respected while dragging, dragging other than strictly horizontally or vertically is pretty much useless (unless there would be an easy way to fix then afterwards without completely redrawing). The current dragging system works mostly by grabbing one item at a time and I have to grab individual wire corners and drag them one by one to fix the wire angles.

See https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/wikis/KiCad-6.0-Roadmap#orthogonal-wire-drag.

I pretty much agree. In ExpressPCB I can insert corners in diagonal wires; then drag those corners to make the wires orthogonal. A main risk is that if a wire ends up over some other junction it is likely to connect. And sometimes it takes a few tries with the mouse to insert a new corner in a wire. I think the main point is that wires do not drag per se, but the corners, end points, and symbols and junctions do drag.

In the attached .gif I am a bit clumsy, but I drag diagonally and then insert corners.

This is a very old feature request that the dev team has accepted as a good idea but that nobody has started work on yet. Essentially this is a “push and shove router” for the schematic, as you have to not only add/remove corners as needed, but also make sure you don’t introduce connectivity changes (in order words, the drag operation needs to be able to shove other things around to prevent the dragged wires from being connected to unrelated wires and pins)

Thanks a lot for that input. BTW I just discovered one option that is helpful… Unchecking “prefer selection to dragging” allows drag without having to hit the G key (so much work!) :slight_smile:

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