← Back to team overview

kicad-developers team mailing list archive

Re: [RFC] Change to object visibility system for usability/clarity

 

When considering the ease of use of the dialog, remember LayerViewSet (python) adds some functionality and will be upgraded to work with v5. I hope similar functionality is built in to v6.

Greg S.

> On Feb 18, 2018, at 7:07 PM, Michael Kavanagh <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hi Jon,
> 
> I like your suggestion. If you're worried about backlash, how about using a wxTreeCtrl to list the copper layers and respective names, and nested under each layer is traces/zones and pads, eg for a 2 layer board:
> 
> 1. F.Cu
> Traces/Zones
> Pads
> 2. B.Cu
> Traces/Zones
> Pads
> 
> Each item could have a checkbox for visibility and colour picker button, but with the "parent" items 1 and 2 being able to override their child elements.
> 
> Just a suggestion, I realise this might be a lot of work and unrealistic for the v5 release.
> 
> Cheers,
> Michael
> 
>> On 19 February 2018 at 00:37, Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I'm going to go to the user forum with these questions too, but curious what the devs think about this:
>> 
>> In my original RFC, I proposed eliminating the different between "front" and "back" in the Render checkboxes.
>> I still think this makes sense for things like text and footprints, but I'm having second thoughts about merging the "Pads Front" and "Pads Back"
>> Right now we have pads set to a different color than other copper on the front and back copper layers.
>> I guess some users probably like this and would get annoyed if we removed the ability for pads to be a special color.
>> Will they get annoyed if we force them to set both the front and the back pads to the same color?
>> 
>> (to be honest, I am used to EDA tools that by default treat pads as part of the copper layer and show them in the same color, so I don't care about this feature)
>> 
>> -Jon
>> 
>>> On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 7:09 PM, Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Thanks Wayne and Jeff (and yes there are a lot of edge cases here to sort out)
>>> 
>>> Note that Andrzej Wolski already did propose some changes related to this that might be good to merge as a first step.
>>> I have only done limited testing on them so far but they do work and resolve some of the problems:
>>> 
>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1743890/comments/6
>>> https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg34009.html
>>> 
>>> -Jon
>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 6:53 PM, Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> Hi Jon,
>>>> 
>>>> Sounds good to me too.  A few edge-cases you might want to watch out for:
>>>> 
>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1733894
>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1744521
>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1744730
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Jeff.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On 18 Feb 2018, at 22:36, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hey Jon,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm good with all of this.  I would like to get this cleaned up before the stable release if possible since there are so many complaints and bug reports about it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Wayne
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 02/18/2018 03:00 PM, Jon Evans wrote:
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>> Right now the behavior of the "Layer" and "Render" tabs of the layers widget are confusing to users, resulting in complaints on the forum and some bug reports:
>>>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1748181
>>>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1743890
>>>>>> I could take a crack at fixing this (before or after 5.0 depending on what the complexity ends up being) but before I write any code I wanted to propose how I think it should work.
>>>>>> I think the visibility of any object should be the AND of layer visibility and render visibility.
>>>>>> To get there:
>>>>>> 1) In the Render tab, get rid of the distinction between front/back. For example "Pads Back" and "Pads Front" becomes just "Pads"
>>>>>> 2) Change the visibility code so that an object is visible if (a) the associated Render setting is turned on for the type of object, and (b) at least one of the layers the object is on is enabled in the Layers tab.
>>>>>> 3) (optionally) Rename "Render" to something more friendly like "Items" or "Item Types" to make it more clear to the user that this is where they can turn off the display of various types of items as opposed to various layerse
>>>>>> If this plan is OK, I will start working out the details of how to get there.  Right now the Render tab is directly controlling the visibility of certain "GAL Layers" but unfortunately the set of objects that appears on one GAL layer is not always equal to the set of objects that the user would expect to turn on and off, as seen by the bug reports.  So, there will have to be some additional logic created to manage these settings beyond just turning on and off layers in the GAL.
>>>>>> -Jon
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>>>> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>>>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>>> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp

References