kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Eeli Kaikkonen <eeli.kaikkonen@xxxxxxxxx>]

ke 13. maalisk. 2019 klo 19.51 Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx)
kirjoitti:

> On 3/12/2019 1:21 PM, Ruth Ivimey-Cook wrote:
>
> >  4. Pcb: is there a chance of a smart snap - where the editor looks for
> >     things to line up the cursor with (e.g. while moving 1 wire it looks
> >     to see if there is another wire nearly in line with it, or while
> >     moving a component it checks to see when this component is 1/2 way
> >     between two other components?)
>
> I'm not sure what you mean precisely mean by this.
>
>
I have given thought to something like this. Technically my proposition
would be a bit more generic.

There could be an "alternative grid" which would consist of lines going
through special points of items. Now the grid can be thought of as
horizontal and vertical lines and each grid point has one of each. In a
regular grid most of the lines converge, i.e. points 1,0 and 2,0 have the
same horizontal line but different vertical lines.

The proposed alternative grid would be activated with for example a hotkey.
The normal grid would disappear. Instead there would be an irregular grid
where every horizontal and vertical line would go through at least one
special point of some item. Special points would be for example anchor
points of footprints and end/start points of lines or track segments. When
moving an item the beginning point of the movement would be a special
point, too (like it is even now, I think, so that you can move horizontally
without changing vertical coordinate or vice versa). The grid would consist
of all those special points and all crossings of these alternative grid
lines.

To be really useful this should be configurable with regards to special
points. Many footprints would be simple enough that all special points
could be active. I would include corner points of pads to the special
points (and would like to have an ability to grab a pad from a corner or
from the mid point of an edge). But for most boards the alternative grid
would soon become too crowded to be practical. Therefore the user should be
able to select which points are used as special points. For example only
center points of footprints or only vias or only track segments or some
combination.

This wouldn't help with finding the mid point ("1/2 way") between two
points. But I have missed such a feature many times, especially when
drawing outlines and other graphics. It's quite tedious to calculate mid
points and hit or mark them.

Eeli Kaikkonen