no matter I am in the PCB editor or the schematic editor, the selection is terrible
in the schematic editor, I rectangle select a couple of wires to move them, it moves the MPU component right above, while it’s not even close nor connected
in the pcb & schematic editors, it will almost always ask me which item I select, just to be sure, even if I am SPOT ON and there is NOTHING AROUND
now editing the pcb, I am over a track with the mouse, pressing delete, it deletes a footprint which is miles away
I repeat the exact same process at the same spot, then it works. this is driving me nuts
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That depends if you drag-select from left to right, or right to left.
First way selects only those items that are fully confined by the selection. Other will select everything that only touches the selection area.
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What are your selection choices? (“Clarify selection”). That should be a hint.
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For V6 and V5 (modern accelerated canvas) selection of component is “persistent” (you can scroll away but the component stays selected). IF there’s something selected, pressing DEL will delete it first. Only with no selection active, the editor will delete item over which mouse cursor is hovering.
This was different in V5 “legacy” editor mode (and older Kicads).
KiCad programmers do not design PCBs, I think that is the problem.
Selecting thing could be better. Editing tracks could be better. A lot things could be better.
One of my first problems was in routing. For instance, if I am routing on top layer, and click a route stub at bottom layer, I get a stray copper on my board. This means, if I click on something, it means just that thing and not something other random thing. KiCad was a toy SW years ago, these features are from that time.
Adding to the selection variations above: in KiCad v6, a long (left) click pops up a little disambiguation menu for cases where selectable items overlap. I use it constantly, but it sounds like maybe OP wasn’t expecting it to show up when nothing else is around. Perhaps shorter clicks are required to get the expected single select action?
Many KiCad developers do design circuits.
Sure there’s always room for improvement, but KiCad nowadays is a potent tool with user interface that gets better with each release.
I don’t understand your case with the “route stub”. Kicad will not automatically route anything on different layer, unless you switch layers (by placing Via). Selecting items is not available when routing tracks, you need to exit the Route tool first (by hitting ESC for example).
Use the Selection Filter panel in the lower right to limit the type of things you can click. If you only want to work with tracks, turn off selection of footprints/pads for example. KiCad will never be able to know which of the 10 overlapping objects in a certain area of the board you meant, so it will sometimes guess wrong. Use the tools available to give KiCad more hints.
Seriously, IMO selecting things works better in v6. You describe the problem so that it sounds like there’s a systematic problem somewhere, not necessarily in KiCad, and KiCad doesn’t normally do like that. What’s your system?
It would help getting a realistic feeling of the situation if you could take a screencast showing those things “live” and attach the pcb file here. We could compare the results.
Please read the posts in your own thread. No way that they don’t design PCBs. A KiCad developers just told you so above. I don’t understands why LM21 spreads that kind of bs.
KiCad has never copypasted from Eagle. There are necessarily similarities between any two EDAs compared with each other. KiCad developers have rather explicitly avoided Eagle resemblance.
As I said, I don’t share your experience at all, and I suspect there’s something wrong somewhere, but your comments aren’t helpful in finding out what it might be. I get a feeling you just want to continue blaming KiCad.
my switch components were not centered around 0,0, so it was selected “miles away”
to select/move the end of the line, you must select the line (2 white extremities) then drag click the dot you want to move (it probably only work on a full moon with the right pronouced spell )
Well, that’s better than nothing but it’s not what I mean.
I’d like to have a way to select whatever is the top-most item/primitive in the stack with a short mouse click (so no long press, no context menu) and then press a shortcut (e.g Tab) to cycle through all the elements in the stack which KiCad treats as overlapping. That is much more quick and convenient for me.
OK now it’s clear to me what you mean. I never used Altium so the way KiCad works became “natural” for me. The algorithm used for guessing the default choice was also fine-tuned in many ways during V6 development so now it mostly picks what I need for the first time (it used not to be so clever in the past).
