Re: gEDA-user: How to move PCB element to layer??

[Harry Eaton <haceaton@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Ok, wart city.
> 
> Why is it 'Edit|Move selected to current layer' for
> some things and
> 'Select|Move selected elements to other side' for
> elements?
> 
> Why is there "moving to layer", "mirror" and "flip"?
> 
> Why is mirror only for things buffers, moving only
> for lines and text
> and flip only for elements?

Conceptually components only exist on the surface
layers, much like the silkscreen. Interestingly I
recently designed a circuit at work that required
"buried" components, so I can see that there is the
very rare need to do this.

But I think your question is more along the lines of
"why are their differening commands?" since I doubt
you are trying to bury a component.

The short answer is because pcb can't handle buried
components and therefore components are either on the
top or bottom, and they must be mirror imaged to be on
the bottom, so that's why they have a special command
- it goes to the layer you want (i.e. the other
surface) without your having to be working on that
layer, and it auto-mirror as it must. It works with a
single keystroke so it's pretty easy to use regardless
of what layer you're on.

It is very rare that traces etc. should be mirrored
and usually you want a whole group mirrored, so we
haven't provided a convenience function for doing that
outside a buffer, but it would be trivial to
implement; back before the hid was introduced single
key macros were really easy to implement (they still
are with lesstif) and you could easily make a key
macro to mirror one single object on the board.

Traces (lines and arcs), and polygons can be on any
layer so they have a move-to-layer function.

If you're trying to move a whole layout region from
front to back of your board, trying cutting the region
to a buffer, then *view* the opposite side of the
board and paste. Viola' everything is done for you.

It wouldn't be too hard to have some special-case code
for the move-to-layer function to check if you've
tried to perform it on an element, and if you have and
the layer is a surface layer then perform the flip
instead.  You should write it.

h.



 
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