On the patches section of the PCB sourceforge project page, there is a patch from harry which addresses the bug found by David Koski regarding creating elements.
-Dan Mail from harry eaton about elements follows: ----------------- David, You found a bug! Converting Buffer contents to elements was working when I first added that "in-place" feature a couple of months ago. I must have done something to break it since then. There are a couple of points to clear up for you: (1) Using the "select" menu requests that you click on the layout. This is NOT to identify the pieces, but to establish the element "mark" which is where the crosshair normally grabs the element (it establishes the position of the element with respect to grid). So the line must already by selected (i.e. cyan color). (2) SMD pads must be either horizontal or vertical lines, it is not allowed to have angled lines for a pad. The lines must be drawn on a layer that belongs to either the top or bottom surface. If you draw a line on an inner layer, it can't become part of an element. The way to determine which layers are on the top or bottom surface is with the layer-groups dialog: settings->edit layer groupings. Any layer checked in the same column as "solder side" or "component side" is a surface layer where you can draw lines that can become pads. You should draw them on the side that the element is going to be on (an element can have pads on both sides e.g. edge connector). (3) Polygons (e.g. rectangles) can't be part of an element definition. If you convert a selection to an element with the third-button pop-up menu the "mark" location is establish as the position where your cursor was when you popped up the menu, saving a step. harry ----- End forwarded message ----- --
