Fabrizio,
Thanks for your encouragement. May I return it in saying I have
appreciated your existing efforts to improve things :-) I am currently
using a nightly kicad: 2017-04-07 70c961f on Mac: apologies if I'm
treading old ground on some things but the Mac build dropped out for a
while.
PcbNew:
1. The "Remove" I mentioned is in the OpenGL context menu in pcbnew
between Flip and Move exactly. IMO should be "Delete".
2. The hidden item: I was looking for the 'update all filled zones'
command, to renew them all following some component moves. I eventually
found that click on edge of the zone the Zones submenu has Fill All and
Unfill All, which seem to do the trick though I don't know whether that
is really correct.
3. While looking at the Zones menu it has the text 'merge zones', which
seems interesting, but then the items present appear to be about adding
more zones (duplicate, add) rather than merge... Was there a merge
(union) zone somewhere?
4. I also spent ages looking for the setting to change the clearance
between tracks and zones; for some reason I did not expect it to be in
the zones settings, but in the track settings (I thought Clearance in
the Zone Properties was about clearance to edge-of-board et al). In the
same area, it is not clear to me what 'Antipad clearance' means...
5. The "Exchange footprints" context menu opens the "Change Footprint"
dialog.
6. On the change footprint dialog, you have an Apply and Cancel button;
as expected Apply leaves the dialog open, but it is semi-modal; you
cannot select an alternate component to change, and it seems unlikely
that having changed once you expect to need to change it again
immediately after. Can we change "Apply" to a dismissing "OK" button?
7. The "Select Layer Pair" menu item opens the "Select Copper Layer
Pair" dialog.
8. Not quite in the same vein, but could the Select Copper Layer Pair be
embedded in the main menu, as the normal Layers panel is? I would prefer
it was always open at the side.
CvPcb:
As a new user, I found "CvPcb" to be a very confusing name and it took a
long time to understand how it fitted in the workflow -- aided mostly by
forum posts. I would suggest a name change to "Footprint association
editor" or similar.
1. The 'settings' wheel on the toolbar has a tooltip "Edit footprint
library table" while the equivalent menu item has "Configure Libraries"
and the dialog itself it "PCB Library Tables". Two different icons are used.
2. View selected footprint is not on the menu, and could be, as could
perform automatic... and delete all... actions.
3. Menu item "Edit footprint association file" could perhaps be added as
a toolbar item, and/or reworked: does it not make sense to "load" or
"save" such files? Could there be text or a link to help describing what
"equ" files are?
Footprint Editor:
This is of course very similar in some ways to Pcbnew, so why are the
tools available so different?
1. Both interfaces have an anchor/origin tool but use different
terminology and different icons for it.
2. Maybe there are good internal reasons but I see no user reason not to
include the dimension and filled zone tools for footprints.
3. Both interfaces have line/polygon tools but use different icons.
4. It would be great to be able to import one footprint into another
using the footprint tool, even if it was a copy not link operation.
5. The Show/hide layers manager option is missing in the FP editor.
6. FP editor "Show edges sketch" and "Show Text sketch" don't appear to
do anything for me. The name would suggest though that the 'Show pads in
outline mode' (etc) actions / terminology should be preferred.
Finally the toolbar containing the grid, zoom controls on the FP editor
is shorter than the equivalent in pcbnew.
Parts library editor:
1. The tooltip for browsing the library uses the text "Library Browser -
Browse Components" while the equivalent for Footprint uses the (clearer,
In My Opinion) "Open footprint viewer".
2. The tooltips for selecting the current library have "Select active
library" or "Select working library". I would prefer "working" but would
prefer consistency more!
3. The Save option uses tooltips "Save footprint in active library" and
"Save current library to disk", which confuses me. It may be that
different things are happening underneath, but the user doesn't
(shouldn't need to... ) know.
4. "Delete component from current library" -- neither "active" nor
"working"...
...
I think that's enough for the moment (?!!), and I hope this is useful.
Regards,
Ruth
On 16/06/2017 16:51, Fabrizio Tappero wrote:
Hi Ruth,
thanks for your feedack. I put quite some energy in trying to fix UI
problems. I just need a little bit more time... ;-)
It would be great if your could provide clear suggestions about those
hidden functionalities.
cheers
Fabrizio
On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 4:27 PM, <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
One of my earliest impressions of KiCad as a new user was
confusion over UI inconsistency: terminology, menu layouts, and
shortcuts in particular. For common actions there should be a
common trigger (key, click) with a common indication (icon,
tooltip words etc). As an example I noticed again yesterday in
pcbnew, mostly you 'delete' an element, except when you 'remove' it!
Personally, I find Command-D very handy as a duplicate action; I
would be happy to see that used whenever it made sense. However,
the best option would be to build in a keymap editor (surely there
are components for this!) so we don't need a one-size-fits-all
solution.
While on the topic, it would be really good to include more
actions on the main menu: there are many things hidden in context
menus that don't need to be.
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