GAL routing near pad changes track direction. Legacy doesn't

[Marcos Chaparro]

While routing a trace close to a pad in GAL I explicitly change the trace direction with / but when it reaches the pad the direction is changed. I back off from the pad, change the direction (/) again and when I get again into the pad the track direction is changed again. I guess the algorithm tries to avoid an extra segment -which makes sense- but sometimes I just need my track to be farther away from a noise source and I don't care about one less track angle.

See 2 quick videos showing the difference between routing behavior. The only thing I did between videos is to press F9

https://youtu.be/puhrZMf7bWg

https://youtu.be/vqwiCvMWAaI

Application: kicad
Version: no-vcs-found-c78a2ba~59~ubuntu16.04.1, release build
Libraries: wxWidgets 3.0.2
           libcurl/7.47.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux 4.8.0-58-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
- Build Info -
wxWidgets: 3.0.2 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
Boost: 1.58.0
Curl: 7.47.0
KiCad - Compiler: GCC 5.4.0 with C++ ABI 1009
        Settings: USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
                  USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
                  KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
                  KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
                  KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
                  KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
                  BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
                  KICAD_USE_OCE=ON

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

Yes, it's switching to keep the number of segments constant. If you want more segments to stay away from something, just click to anchor the track and then continue.

[Marcos Chaparro (nitrousnrg)]

Hi Jeff,
even anchoring a segment, the next segment creates an unwanted track posture change (like pressing /) or an unwaned 90° bend.

This is definitely a regression in a particular scenario of routing when the pad size to segment size ratio is large.
There is no reason to forcefully change the track posture if we have a hotkey to manually do that
I'm trying to understand the rationale behind this, I think changing the track posture allows to wiggle your way out between pads, but the posture change right before connecting to the pad is not intuitive.

See again with the lastest pcbnew

https://youtu.be/WvXQLaTnd-A

Application: kicad
Version: 5.0.0-rc2-dev-unknown-41ac458~64~ubuntu16.04.1, release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.2
    libcurl/7.47.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux 4.13.0-38-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Build Info:
    wxWidgets: 3.0.2 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 2.24
    Boost: 1.58.0
    Curl: 7.47.0
    Compiler: GCC 5.4.0 with C++ ABI 1009

Build settings:
    USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
    USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_SPICE=ON

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. Try searching for "lp:#1705520" on https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues