2 ms·

> Cursor/pointer warping: Essential for many CAD operations Err no. I don't know why EDA guys have this weird idea that cursor warping is totally normal. Desig

> Cursor/pointer warping: Essential for many CAD operations Err no. I don't know why EDA guys have this weird idea that cursor warping is totally normal. DesignSpark PCB does this too - when you zoom it warps the cursor! Wtf is that? Kicad has pretty awful UX so I guess this crazy view isn't that surprising. > things like being able to position windows or warp the mouse cursor. This functionality was omitted by design, not oversight. Yeah again... I'll give you window positioning, but an app should never warp my cursor. It's mine. Get your stupid hands off it.

phkahler 1y ago
IMHO window positioning is the job of the DE, which will also mean a unified behavior for all apps. Unfortunately I've been waiting years for gnome to implement this.
jeroenhd 1y ago
It's a UI pattern that I thought died in the 90s. When it works well, you don't notice the pattern is even there. When it doesn't, it looks janky as hell. There are shortcomings to the current/recent state of Wayland (KDE hasn't had support for storing window positions until Plasma 6.4! HDR and VRR are missing from many compositors (and X11 DEs to be fair)! Fractional scaling doesn't even work right in many Linux applications!) but when it comes to design decisions, I'm mostly on Wayland's side.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  It did die in the 90s! Apparently for everyone except Kicad (and DesignSpark PCB). I bet Eagle does it too; that's even more of a UX disaster than Kicad.
  - indrora 1y ago
    Most of the professional tier CAD suites do it as well. It's one of the Quirks^tm of that field. Newcomers to the field go "WTF??" but the old hats go "yeah and you'll learn to appreciate it." And you do learn to appreciate it. the cursor warping in KiCad is absolutely essential to high level operation because it means you don't think where you're zooomed to now, you point, you zoom, you've zoomed. Once you get used to some of the keyboard shortcuts to fly around the board, you get used to focusing on the center of the display rather than having to eye around looking for the component, which might be buried in a few layers of traces and vias on-screen.
    - IshKebab 1y ago
      > Most of the professional tier CAD suites do it as well. Hmm I'm not sure. I've used NX, Pro/E, Solidworks and Fusion 360 very briefly and none of them did it. Which ones do?
      - indrora 1y ago
        AutoCAD historically has, as does some configurations of SolidEDGE, DraftSight. It's much more a feature of specifically 2D CAD suites it seems; 3D comes with a different paradigm of movement, and in 2D CAD you're working in a different mindset: 3D CAD is almost all CSG, whereas 2D CAD is mostly targeted at emulating a drafting table.
  - Ballas 1y ago
    Eagle does not do cursor warping as far as I know.
BearOso 1y ago
When doing a fullscreen game without a visible mouse cursor, it's common to continuously warp the hidden pointer to the center and use the pointer position deltas. You could probably go lower level and use the raw device, but you end up dealing with permissions and compatibility, so it's more difficult.
varispeed 1y ago
> Kicad has pretty awful UX Interesting. I tried very much every EDA available on the market and Kicad has no contest. Easy to learn, doesn't get in the way and you can design boards in no time. Contrast with e.g. Altium. That one, in my opinion, is a prime example of awful UX. You have to constantly battle it to do anything.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Well yeah just because the others are bad doesn't mean Kicad is good! I haven't tried Altium but I've used DesignSpark PCB, Horizon EDA, Eagle, Kicad and Geda. Geda is dead now but I remember it being basically worthless. Eagle seemed like it should be good but they've somehow screwed up every possible UX decision, sometimes in ways that I wouldn't have even thought of if I was trying. They somehow screwed up copy & paste! Look at this absolute insanity: https://youtu.be/XHwRnunzQUE?t=35 https://youtu.be/XHwRnunzQUE?t=35 I wonder what Tantacrul would say about that. DesignSpark PCB is actually quite good. It's free with no limits but not open source. Has quite a dated GUI and weird zooming but other than that the UX is one of the least WTF-y I've seen. Kicad is very powerful but the developers are clearly actively hostile to good UX. Horizon EDA is based on Kicad's engine but fixes the UX. It's quite good but it does have a slightly confusing component model, and I have found it to be kind of slow sometimes. I haven't tried LibrePCB yet - it does look quite good. Going to try it out for my next project.
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    CAD software, in general, tends to have a bit of a historical baggage problem. The oldest software is _old_, so it has all kinds of UI quirks because there was basically no standard of how to design UIs. And it's an area where people build up a lot of muscle memory and get upset when it changes, so any given tool tends to basically keep the same decisions almost indefinitely (and users/devs will have all kinds of rationalisations about how it's actually better, not just what they've gotten used to). And then the newer CAD tools start by copying an old one (KiCAD is very obviously based on EAGLE) and then change a few things around, but not too much, so you still get something far away from a typical UI. There's basically nothing that starts from scratch, and for a lot of patterns there's no obvious 'standard' to implement, either (I feel this pain when swapping between 3D applications: how do I pan, rotate, or zoom? It always takes a while for me to figure it out again, because I don't think any two of the 10 or so applications I use do it exactly the same way, and realistically most of approaches are fine, it's just the variety that's the headache)
duped 1y ago
I've worked on CAD software in my career, and some other domains with "special" UI considerations and it's worth pointing out that this kind of commentary is dismissed and ignored by the developers of this software, because it doesn't line up with what real users of the software report or request.
bsder 1y ago
> I don't know why EDA guys have this weird idea that cursor warping is totally normal. You can't implement a circular menu without pointer warp (you can, it just sucks).
eviks 1y ago
> but an app should never warp my cursor. It's mine. Get your stupid hands off it. What if the hands are smart? This is a rather primitive view on UI complexity. While you should be able to block the app from changing your pointer, it doesn't make sense to not have the functionality for when it can help users
Ballas 1y ago
That is the first thing I turn off in Kicad (earlier versions I had to fix the source and recompile). I have never seen a good reason for cursor warping.
immibis 1y ago
Cursor warping makes sense in Blender. You can drag something past the side of the screen and it wraps back to the other side and you can still keep dragging in the same direction. In other contexts it would make sense for the cursor to lock at the edge of a widget and for the widget to scroll. Only when dragging.

phkahler 1y ago

IMHO window positioning is the job of the DE, which will also mean a unified behavior for all apps. Unfortunately I've been waiting years for gnome to implement this.

jeroenhd 1y ago

It's a UI pattern that I thought died in the 90s. When it works well, you don't notice the pattern is even there. When it doesn't, it looks janky as hell. There are shortcomings to the current/recent state of Wayland (KDE hasn't had support for storing window positions until Plasma 6.4! HDR and VRR are missing from many compositors (and X11 DEs to be fair)! Fractional scaling doesn't even work right in many Linux applications!) but when it comes to design decisions, I'm mostly on Wayland's side.

IshKebab 1y ago
It did die in the 90s! Apparently for everyone except Kicad (and DesignSpark PCB). I bet Eagle does it too; that's even more of a UX disaster than Kicad.
- indrora 1y ago
  Most of the professional tier CAD suites do it as well. It's one of the Quirks^tm of that field. Newcomers to the field go "WTF??" but the old hats go "yeah and you'll learn to appreciate it." And you do learn to appreciate it. the cursor warping in KiCad is absolutely essential to high level operation because it means you don't think where you're zooomed to now, you point, you zoom, you've zoomed. Once you get used to some of the keyboard shortcuts to fly around the board, you get used to focusing on the center of the display rather than having to eye around looking for the component, which might be buried in a few layers of traces and vias on-screen.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    > Most of the professional tier CAD suites do it as well. Hmm I'm not sure. I've used NX, Pro/E, Solidworks and Fusion 360 very briefly and none of them did it. Which ones do?
    - indrora 1y ago
      AutoCAD historically has, as does some configurations of SolidEDGE, DraftSight. It's much more a feature of specifically 2D CAD suites it seems; 3D comes with a different paradigm of movement, and in 2D CAD you're working in a different mindset: 3D CAD is almost all CSG, whereas 2D CAD is mostly targeted at emulating a drafting table.
- Ballas 1y ago
  Eagle does not do cursor warping as far as I know.

BearOso 1y ago

When doing a fullscreen game without a visible mouse cursor, it's common to continuously warp the hidden pointer to the center and use the pointer position deltas. You could probably go lower level and use the raw device, but you end up dealing with permissions and compatibility, so it's more difficult.

varispeed 1y ago

> Kicad has pretty awful UX Interesting. I tried very much every EDA available on the market and Kicad has no contest. Easy to learn, doesn't get in the way and you can design boards in no time. Contrast with e.g. Altium. That one, in my opinion, is a prime example of awful UX. You have to constantly battle it to do anything.

IshKebab 1y ago
Well yeah just because the others are bad doesn't mean Kicad is good! I haven't tried Altium but I've used DesignSpark PCB, Horizon EDA, Eagle, Kicad and Geda. Geda is dead now but I remember it being basically worthless. Eagle seemed like it should be good but they've somehow screwed up every possible UX decision, sometimes in ways that I wouldn't have even thought of if I was trying. They somehow screwed up copy & paste! Look at this absolute insanity: https://youtu.be/XHwRnunzQUE?t=35 https://youtu.be/XHwRnunzQUE?t=35 I wonder what Tantacrul would say about that. DesignSpark PCB is actually quite good. It's free with no limits but not open source. Has quite a dated GUI and weird zooming but other than that the UX is one of the least WTF-y I've seen. Kicad is very powerful but the developers are clearly actively hostile to good UX. Horizon EDA is based on Kicad's engine but fixes the UX. It's quite good but it does have a slightly confusing component model, and I have found it to be kind of slow sometimes. I haven't tried LibrePCB yet - it does look quite good. Going to try it out for my next project.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  CAD software, in general, tends to have a bit of a historical baggage problem. The oldest software is _old_, so it has all kinds of UI quirks because there was basically no standard of how to design UIs. And it's an area where people build up a lot of muscle memory and get upset when it changes, so any given tool tends to basically keep the same decisions almost indefinitely (and users/devs will have all kinds of rationalisations about how it's actually better, not just what they've gotten used to). And then the newer CAD tools start by copying an old one (KiCAD is very obviously based on EAGLE) and then change a few things around, but not too much, so you still get something far away from a typical UI. There's basically nothing that starts from scratch, and for a lot of patterns there's no obvious 'standard' to implement, either (I feel this pain when swapping between 3D applications: how do I pan, rotate, or zoom? It always takes a while for me to figure it out again, because I don't think any two of the 10 or so applications I use do it exactly the same way, and realistically most of approaches are fine, it's just the variety that's the headache)

duped 1y ago

I've worked on CAD software in my career, and some other domains with "special" UI considerations and it's worth pointing out that this kind of commentary is dismissed and ignored by the developers of this software, because it doesn't line up with what real users of the software report or request.

bsder 1y ago

> I don't know why EDA guys have this weird idea that cursor warping is totally normal. You can't implement a circular menu without pointer warp (you can, it just sucks).

eviks 1y ago

> but an app should never warp my cursor. It's mine. Get your stupid hands off it. What if the hands are smart? This is a rather primitive view on UI complexity. While you should be able to block the app from changing your pointer, it doesn't make sense to not have the functionality for when it can help users

Ballas 1y ago

That is the first thing I turn off in Kicad (earlier versions I had to fix the source and recompile). I have never seen a good reason for cursor warping.

immibis 1y ago

Cursor warping makes sense in Blender. You can drag something past the side of the screen and it wraps back to the other side and you can still keep dragging in the same direction. In other contexts it would make sense for the cursor to lock at the edge of a widget and for the widget to scroll. Only when dragging.