Re: gEDA-user: PCB: Connecting Nets by hand

["harry eaton" <bumpelo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Turning off auto-DRC-checking is the only way that I was able to
>successfully connect pins by hand, at all.

You must not have had any rats nest turned on.

>The inability to edit traces after their drawn, however, is maddening.

Let's see, you can insert points, delete points, move lines, move line
endpoints, change
the thickness,what layer it's on, and how much it clears through polygons
or delete it. You can do this by segements and with a little more trouble
by whole nets. Before we moved to gtk it was very easy to bind a script
to a single key that would for example increase the thickness of all lines
on net by 1 mil. Now it seems like you have to recompile to do that.

>And moving parts once they've touched a trace is infuriating -- no matter
>what I do, it drags all the trace endpoints with it!

Sounds like you should turn off "enable rubberband mode" in the settings
menu
since you don't like it. While you're at it maybe you want total freedom on
your
line directions by enabling all-direction lines.

It is certainly worth a few minutes time to learn to use the keyboard
operations
like "s" for increasing the size of something on screen. Learning to use the
arrow
tool is also a good idea. And you will probably be happier with a really
fine grid.