gEDA-user: Dispersing updated & new elements -- question

[Richard Rasker <rasker@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm currently in the middle of a largish project, involving several
hundred elements and some 1,500 connections, still using a rather older
version of PCB (20080202) -- so far, it served me well.

It so happens that on several occasions, I changed the footprint of
several dozen components at once (e.g. from 0805 to 0603). When I do
this in gschem and invoke gsch2pcb, the updated elements all end up in
the upper left corner of PCB's main window -- more precisely: for the
most part outside the visible and accessible part of this window.

And this is where I stumble upon a bit of a hassle: I'd like to have
those elements dispersed for easy picking, but that seems to be
impossible:
- "Disperse all elements" is no option, since I already placed and
routed a lot of stuff that I really, really don't want to mess up.
- "Disperse selected elements" doesn't work, because the elements can't
be selected, as they lie mostly outside the main window.
- Clicking and dragging results in dragging all the refdes text first;
only when the last refdes text has been dragged from the corner, I can
start dragging the actual elements. This means that I first have to
reunite all those dragged-away refdes'es with their respective elements.
- Switching off the silk layer (to avoid dragging the refdes text) means
that I can't drag anything any more.

I can't help but wonder if there's a better way to do this? Can I select
the (new, updated) elements if they're mostly outside the main window?
Or is there another way to avoid dragging the refdes text first and
foremost? And would upgrading to a newer version of PCB fix this
behaviour?

Thanks in advance, and my apologies if this question has already been
answered (and yes, I /did/ search the gEDA archives).

Best regards,

Richard Rasker



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