adopt rapid copper filling

[zakhar nasimov]

method is
-user hovers over a pad
-user presses hotkey
-copper fill tool is selected and activated with same net as pad without any dialogs

[Rene Poeschl (poeschlr)]

I can think of the following usecase for this:
Lets assume one is designing a PCB with some high current paths. One might want to draw these paths with copper zones instead of using traces to get the maximum available width.

Or to be able to connect a much thicker "trace" to the pad than the width of the pad. this is mainly an issue for entering the outermost pad sideways because the rounded end of the trace will protrude from the pad.

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It might additionally be a good idea to more closely bind such a zone to the pad. Right now such a zone is broken if the netname changes for some reason (example reannotating the schematic or sometimes even when moving around symbols in the schematic.)
The same does not happen to traces as these get their netname from the pad they are connected to.

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There are of course other alternatives to fulfill my listed usecases (square end traces, a way to tell kicad to expand specific traces to the maximum available space).

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@zakhar it might be best if you provide an explanation of your usecase/workflow to make it more likely that developers understand what is needed. Maybe your suggested solution is not the best option. (This is often the case with such solution requests. See my example above where i not only highlight what usecase would be simplified but also already state additional requirements and a possible alternative solution.)

[zakhar nasimov (thedocument)]

What this enables a user to do is rapidly tie pads in close vicinity together with copper fills rather than large round edged traces which overlap to adjoining pads. I constantly use copper fill to tie together close nets and edge nets were there are nets in pluralities coincident to the same netclass.

The issue remains with ordinary wide traces protruding outwardly. Attached image depicts such a situation with only the copper fill tool eliminates. The copper fill tool is a precision tool which I utilize quite often. Laying wide traces only causes more issues in many cases.

[zakhar nasimov (thedocument)]

This is quite a simple but versatile feature request. Especially were boards demand many different fill zones.

[John Beard (john-j-beard)]

Could certainly be a relatively "fluent" feature.

Where would the zones take their other properties from without making the user choose with a dialog?

If you use "last-used properties", how do you set the first properties, e.g. on a fresh startup.

If you use "other zones on net or layer", what if you have multiple zones that match the rule, but they have different properties?

Perhaps something like the "copy pad properties" for zones?

[zakhar nasimov (thedocument)]

It seems its worth implementing "Default Copper Fill Zone" properties into the Board Setup set of dialogs. Otherwise user might encounter spurious settings and its more ideal to have default options since most zones need a priority level of greater than typical whole board ground fills.

[zakhar nasimov (thedocument)]

The zone priority level is quite considerable since board-wide ground fill with same priority level as non ground fill will wreck a whole board incurring disaster if the user ever assembles it after its fabricated. These are likely difficult to prevent without default settings since this tool calls for rapid copper zone laying and without default options the zone priority level issue can occur.

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2388