kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[David Godfrey <info@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hmm,

I'v not used it on Kicad but the ability to change the orientation of an
arbitrary selection of footprints is something I've used many times in
Altium.

Ideally you want to be able to set an absolute orientation, and also a
relative (to current) angle adjustment.

This is especially useful when designing boards like LED matrices and
wanting to put all resisters on a specific angle (eg: 21.3deg).
You can then do an array alignment with the same outer limit you used
for your LED alignment.
Then move the group of resistors into position relative to the LED's.

Now running your tracks becomes trivial.

Without the ability to auto adjust the orientation on a selection of
parts the job becomes long and tedious.
Some of the PCB's I've done this on have over 1000 LED's and resistors,
and generally you need to orient both the resistors and the LED's

So in summary, I'd like to keep the ability to do this, but on a
selection instead of globally.
And being able to alter it as an absolute angle, or as a relative to
current (prefix the new angle with + or - to get relative movement)
would be beneficial.

Regards
David G

On 13/04/16 06:40, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> I wonder how many of you are even aware of DIALOG_ORIENT_FOOTPRINTS. It's
> hidden in the Secret Menu in pcbnew (the spread-and-place) one, menu item
> Orient All Footprints. The code hasn't been touched since 2010 except a few
> cleanups, and it seems really simplistic and useless to me. I was going to
> upgrade it to floating-point angle entry like everything else, but....
>
> Does _anybody_ even use this? It seems utterly useless. I have no idea when
> you'd want to globally apply an orientation to footprints. Can I just tear it
> out?  :P
>