There are three main ways to move an object:

1. Left-click on an object and drag it. If it is selected, everything else that is currently selected will be moved with it.
2. Select one or more objects and press <M> to begin moving, and then left-click to place them in their new position.
3. Select one or more objects, and then use Edit→Move Mode. Left click once to begin moving the objects, and again to finish.

Any nets connected to objects that you are moving will stretch (or “rubberband”) so that they stay connected. You can turn this behaviour on and off using Options→Toggle net rubberband.

If you hold <Ctrl> while moving, the movement will be constrained to be only horizontal or vertical.

You can also rotate and mirror objects or groups of objects.

To rotate the selection 90° anticlockwise around the current position of the mouse pointer, press <E R>. If you are in the process of placing an object on the page (for example, while moving it), you can also rotate by middle-clicking.

To flip the selection left-to-right around the mouse pointer, press <E I>.

When you have objects selected, you can make a quick copy by pressing <E C>, and then left-clicking to place the copied objects. You can right-click while placing to cancel the copy. You can also make a quick copy by selecting Edit→Copy mode from the menu, in which case you must then left-click to begin copying and again to finish.

If you need to make more than one copy, you can use Edit→Multiple Copy Mode, or press <E Y>. This is like a normal quick copy, except you can left-click multiple times to make several copies of the selection, and right-click to finish copying.

If you hold <Ctrl> while making quick copies, the copy will be constrained to be in line with the original either horizontally or vertically.

You can copy and paste selected objects using the system clipboard. To copy the selection to the system clipboard, select Edit→Copy, or to remove it from the page and put it in the clipboard, Edit→Cut.

If the clipboard contains gEDA schematic or symbol data, you can place it on the page with Edit→Paste. While placing the clipboard data, you can right-click to cancel.

gschem supports several buffers, which work just like the system clipboard, except they are not accessible to other applications. You can access them through the Buffer menu.

Buffers can be useful when you have a set of objects that you wish to paste multiple times during an editing session, but not all at once.