kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Reece Pollack <reece@xxxxxxx>]

For myself, I see no value to having the Ratsnest on/off in the View menu or in Preferences. Having it in the left toolbar as well as the Layers widget is duplicative but convenient. 

What would seriously reduce my use of the Ratsnest show/hide function is the ability to limit what nets appear in the ratsnest. I'd guess about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the ratsnest in my designs is GND. These eventually get connected to internal planes through vias, and seeing these airwires all over the place is just visual noise. Other big offenders are the various power nets (+3V3, +1V2, etc.) which I'd often prefer to hide. Eagle supports showing/hiding nets by name via the command line, and KiCad needs a similar capability. I seem to recall this being on the roadmap though I could be mistaken. 

Thinking it through a bit more, it might be more valuable to allow hiding/showing by net class rather than by name. This would make it easier to navigate in a GUI as there would be fewer net classes than nets, and this would group similar nets together. 

-Reece 


From: "Jeff Young" <jeff@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: "Wayne Stambaugh" <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> 
Cc: "KiCad Developers" <kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2019 10:26:38 AM 
Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] Ratsnest options 

So I’ll be the contrary one. 

First, I do agree with getting the number of access points down. 

However, I find myself turning the ratsnest on and off a lot. And the toolbar is /much/ easier than the layers palette for that. 

As far as Preferences, I agree that it’s the right place for curved/straight (well, actually I’d be inclined to just offer curved, but I already lost that fight). But why have shown/not shown in preferences? And for that matter units and coordinates. These aren’t really set-and-forget types of things, and the options toolbar is both easier to access and more visible for inspection. 

So how about removing in/mm and polar/cartesian from Preferences (and leaving them and ratsnest on/off in the options toolbar), rather than moving ratsnest on/off to Preferences? 

Cheers, 
Jeff. 




On 13 Jun 2019, at 14:47, Wayne Stambaugh < [ mailto:stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx | stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx ] > wrote: 

On 6/13/19 9:35 AM, Seth Hillbrand wrote: 

BQ_BEGIN
On 2019-06-12 22:50, Jon Evans wrote: 

BQ_BEGIN
I like that set of options. It fits in to my plan of absorbing as much 
as possible from the left toolbar into the layer widget as part of my 
overhaul of that part of the UI. 
I also think it would be totally fine to have it *only* in the layer 
widget, because we don't duplicate the other object visibility 
controls in Preferences. 



I like this even better. Single location, placed with all view options. 
Anyone have objections to this idea? 


BQ_BEGIN

The "Show ratsnest with curved lines" checkbox fits in to Preferences 
(and not the left toolbar) in my mind, because it seems like a "set 
and forget" kind of setting, not one that I would toggle on and off 
all the time while I'm working on a board (but maybe others 
disagree??) 

BQ_END

I tend to agree with this as well. I've placed it in the preferences 
for now and I think removing it from the View menu and the left toolbar 
is a good idea. Any objections to this idea? 

-S 

BQ_END

I don't have an issue with either of these. 

Wayne 

_______________________________________________ 
Mailing list: [ https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers | https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers ] 
Post to : [ mailto:kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] 
Unsubscribe : [ https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers | https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers ] 
More help : [ https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp | https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp ] 

BQ_END



_______________________________________________ 
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