Hi,
Even if I zoom in, I cannot select the end point of a board line to move it
it selects the whole line ( if I get lucky … selection in kicad is horrendous at best )
was this fixed at some point ?I use v 5.1.9
thanks
I think V6 introduced rectangles for the board outline, which made handling the outline much easier.
Umm, why don’t you just grab and move that one endpoint? You can do it even when the whole line is selected.
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I honestly don’t recall if this is implemented in V5, but try a block selection.
Click on an emtpy space to the right of the edge line, drag down and to the left across a portion of the edge line, release. That may select the line. It does in V6.
no I cannot move the sole end point, the whole line is moving as a whole object
Unfortunately, phil1 is right. The “Drag” functionality known from the schematic editor does not exist in the PCB editor.
I can drag the endpoints in PCB Editor in both 5.1 and 6.0, by grabbing the white squares. Only if I drag by the line segment (not the endpoint white square), the whole line moves.
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wow…as I added a rounded corner to my PCB corners, I suddenly, for some magical reasons I guess, could finally select and move the tip of each lines…what?
I could swear it was not working when I posted this one, no matter what I tried
selecting and moving stuffs around should not be so cryptic…and I come from Proteus and Eagle…
also there is no doubt if I try again tomorrow it wont work anymore
I always wondered why electronic cad softwares had to be so stiff and unintuitive…it’s like a fashion, a guideline, coming from an ancient grimoire written in letters of our blood
like if we did’nt had bigger fish to fry than fighting with the mouse against a freaking line of pixels … in 2020
for god sake
Resizing:
step 1: Press the line of pixels or object you want to resize (zooming in may help if hard to grab)
step 2: Press and move the white square (in the end) to resize the object.
Moving:
Step 1: Press and move the object
Fish fried 2022 style
Works for me in pcbnew in both v5.1 and v6.0, as it did for fred4u.
Edit: I’ve used it so many times to make rounded corners. First draw the bounding rectangle in the Edge Cuts layer. Then draw the quarter circles at each corner. Finally shrink the sides to meet the quarter circles. It’s very easy if your dimensions align with the grid.
Yes, dragging one point of a line has always worked. I don’t remember ever having problems with it. I don’t know why it doesn’t work for someone else. Maybe if the user has been used to click far away from the endpoint with some other software. I agree that sometimes selecting the right thing is difficult, but when a line has been selected already, I don’t have any problem moving the mouse pointer over an endpoint, pressing and holding the mouse button and dragging it.
I find that grabbing the endpoint to stretch the line, rather than the line to move it, is more reliable in V6 than V5.1
I just wanted to say the same but…
I have here (at home) KiCad V5.1.12 and one test PCB and I can’t get those two squares at edge cuts lines.
I can Move the line by pressing M.
I can manually edit its ends by pressing E.
O!!!
I got it.
My KiCad here was really not used by me ever.
I don’t know why but it was set to Legacy Toolset.
After switching to Modern Toolset everything works.
But it can’t be the explanation of OPs problems as he show the screenshot with those squares visible.
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Oh yes, I didn’t even notice the OP was using v5.1! That may be the reason there. The legacy toolset was indeed horrible (judging by today’s standards).
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CAD software ignoring all the user interface guidelines established for 30 years in other software is a sticking point for me as well and why I haven’t made much inroads trying to learn Fusion 360, Inventor, etc. I understand parametric modeling requires new paradigms and mouse gestures, but why must the basics be so bizarre and alien?
Anyway I have also encountered the issue in PCBNew where it wants to drag the entire line rather than the endpoint. Assuming you are on KiCad 6 with the modern toolkit enabled, the selection targets for line endpoints is quite small, but I’ve gotten used to it. The graphical controls in KiCad are definitely improving over time.
Probably the answer is simply: legacy.
Most of the CAD software is not written from scratch, but instead are built evolutionally upon some ancient predecessors.
Now you either stick to the “legacy” behavior and keep your existing userbase happy, or adapt the recent UX flow and risk making the old users unhappy (but at the same time, make it easier for the newcomers to adopt). Even with KICAD, there was soooo much “quirkiness” in the V3 and V4 (V3 was a starting point to me). Now V6 made a great progress since that, but many paradigms have been radically changed.
My opinion is, whenever someone discovers that some common function is performed not the way which is considered “common” in general software, my advice is to report this on the issue tracker (or discuss it here first).
The developers, if given good reason, are truly open to such input.
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maybe you should try hopping over to 2022 like the rest of us and try the current version of kicad instead of using some weirdly outdated one. There are quite a lot of useful updates in v6.
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This too often becomes “Why is the UX not the same as Eagle/Altium/Protel…”
Most commercial ECAD has very quirky user interface, just that people have become used to it. KiCad has special problems because of the Mac support. Apple and MS have never done things the same way
The point is, all of the “professional” software (“Eagle/Protel/Altium/Orcad/Whatevercad”) works in a quirky way. However there are some common pardigms used in General software (word/paint/drawing software etc) which usually works in some very common way. And I mean only such functions like basic modification, window/object behavior etc.
I’m all against making an interface quirky where otherwise a very common way of doing things is widespread.
For CAD software, my comment is “Why is the UX not the same as Illustrator?” 