Feature Request: Via Selection

[Anonymous]

One of the recent versions made it extremely had to click on vias to move them. When I click on a via, it selects the associated copper trace 80% of the time (which is what I intend to do 5% of the time) and the only way I can find to select the via is perfectly click on the dead center of the via and try several times until it works right.

I would request one of the following:

- Right click enabled selection so that I can cycle between the trace and the via; or

- Default to selecting the via when near one, which I am pretty sure what most people intend (and moving off the via to select a trace is much easier to do than perfectly click on the center of a via to *not* select a trace).

- Have an option in the move tool (in the area for keep angle, disconnect, etc) to only move vias? Or something?

Just some reasonably quick way to do this would be quite nice, I've been hitting this issue frequently in normal usage.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Jorge!

I can also confirm that disabling the group default on option did not change the via move behavior.

[didrik.madheden]

@rachaelATWH4 You're right. I went out of line and behaved inappropriately. For that, I wish to apologize. If you wish to investigate that function further, feel free to do so, but if not that's obviously fine as well.

Related to the question of the thread, @jorge_garcia Maybe it would be a nice feature (regardless of the issues reported here) to have an option to turn on highlighting of which element(s) Eagle thinks you are hovering the mouse over, so that you can predict this before clicking.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @didrik.madheden,

I hope you're doing well and thanks for all of the effort you've been putting into the forums to help your fellow users, good job. If the cycle select where behaving as it should then you would see the individual items highlight as you cycle through them. So this is already implemented in EAGLE is just isn't working right now.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Dear Jorge,

Just wanted to confirm that this issue with via selection is still present in version 9.3.2 on both Windows 10 and Ubuntu Linux. Would be lovely if this fix got into an update soon!

Brian

[Anonymous]

Just going to add my screencast also, hard to move vias due to unambiguous selection Highlighting, if just the select highlighting was distinct then it would be easier also. There is no difference via or trace connected it all highlights the same. ( also make the hole in vias transparent when placing! lol that would be awesome )

[ksearingAWXPK]

I hate to revive an old thread, but this issue is still present 2 months and several version updates later...  @jorge_garcia is there an update to this issue?  I can confirm that it's still a problem on 9.4.1.

[Anonymous]

It is also still broken for me, was pretty frustrating today.

At this point it's easier to just delete it and create a new trace. I'm
assuming it's do-not-fix because being able to tell it to only select
vias is somehow a substitute since technically I think that would do
it.

If you don't have to move anything other than the via and not adjust
everything near it for DRC. Which of course is what everyone has to do.

[Anonymous]

You have to be dead on the via origin to pick it up, sometimes I will change my grid just to move vias to make it easier. No one really has replied to any of the posts I made, all with screencasts and everything.. shrug

[jorge_garcia]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for continuing to follow up on this issue. I believe I made a ticket about this when it was first reported. Let me double check and if it's not there, I'll make it. I'll bring this up with the devs today to see what we can do to get it sorted.

UPDATE: Found the ticket, will be talking with devs about this today.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[C.Nicks]

I will add a quick note regarding selection behavior withe the defualt group mode.
With it unchecked (regular, legacy behavior) the select and catch radius numbers are used to select and catch objects surrounding the mouse cursor. If there are multiple objects within the cathc then you can cycle select and choose the right one.
With the group default option checked, the select factor and catch radius are NOT used at all. You can only select objects that are touched. So for vias you have to select from dead center origin, from traces you have to be touching the copper, etc. This makes selecting within a design incredibly hard and the reason I cannot use that mode.
Sure it would be nice to always have group/move active, but the messed up selection mechanisms make it a productivity loss for me.
I hope this clears up a little more about the group default mode and selections.

If you want to try an experiment, try turning up your select and catch factors and uncheck the group default on option. Zoom out and use something like the SHOW tool to select in a blank area and see what it selects. Be sure to cycle select to see what else it is considering within the catch.
Then without changing anything else, turn on the group default mode. Now try selecting in the same empty space and notice it doesn't want to select a single object regardless of catch or select factor.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I tried all that already made no difference in making it easier , the problem is not so much selecting it,  its the selection highlighting, you cannot right click cycle, because there is no visible change in selecting the via or a trace, it is identical, so that is useless. There is no confusion about how select works in this issue.