First-class support for board outlines

[Gioele Barabucci]

In Kicad/pcbnew version 4.0.6 there is no easy way to use pre-drawn board models/outlines (for examples, standard Raspberry Pi HATs with fixed dimensions, hole placements and sink screen).

This feature request stems from the discussion thread at <https://forum.kicad.info/t/reusable-board-models-best-practices/6925>.

Currently, there are two ways to use pre-drawn board models/outlines and none of them is user-friendly:

* drawing the board as a footprint,
* drawing the board in a PCB file that then gets copied when starting a new design with this board (the copying can be done manually or via templates).

In the first case (board design as footprint) editing is cumbersome because the board footprint overlaps with the other footprints. This means that one is constantly requested to clarify their selection, disambiguating between the component one clicked on and the underlying PCB footprint. Laying out the board becomes a tiring task very quickly. On the other hand, one retains the ability to modify the board footprint in one place only and have it updated in the other projects simultaneously.

In the second case (board design in a base PCB file that is copied) editing is much simpler, but one loses the ability to update the board design in an easy way.

A possible way to support board models would be make the users able to mark footprints as "shown, but not interactive", so that the board footprints do not trigger the selection clarification dialog.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

The Selection Clarification menu no longer comes up in the cases, so I'm marking this as fixed. Please re-open if you find specific cases of the menu coming up when a footprint is used as a board outline.