All, I do not see a Board Outline Layer (or Mechanical Layer) in any of the discussions. Where are defined the boundaries of the PCB? With other CAD tools, I have used a mechanical layer that was storing the Board Outline, and Any cut-outs and any non plated holes used for securing the board. That layer was easily imported from either a dwg or dxf drawing called the Board Blank.
Jean-Paul AC9GH On Jun 4, 2014, at 3:35 PM, Wayne Stambaugh <[email protected]> wrote: > On 6/4/2014 2:33 PM, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 04, 2014 at 02:20:12PM -0400, Wayne Stambaugh wrote: >>> user confusion. Where would you save them in the old kicad_pcb file >>> format after you made changes? If Pcbnew where a read only application, >>> then this would be less of an issue. >> >> That's why I questioned if it would be desiderable... >> >> The only thing I think would be possible to keep *backward* >> compatibility is using optional forms, so if you don't use that feature >> the file remain compatible (no strange layers and the file still loads). >> I changed the quotation rules for the sexp in a backward compatible way >> and now they are both LISP and kicad compatible. > > Backwards compatibility is not optional. We should always be able read > older board and footprint file formats. That was one of the things that > drove the design of the current layer parsing of legacy boards and the > design of the new layer sexpr format. > >> >> PDF works in this way (unknown features are simply ignored), but it's >> designed to be an 'append only' format. And obviously javascript doesn't >> work in xpdf. However a PDF editor changing the rest of the file would >> probably break the javascript stuff (at most it could preserve the script >> object, but all the anchors could be broken...) >> > > I think we should steer the discussion towards defining what > improvements we need to make to the board and footprint file formats to > support the changes we have been discussing. Once that is defined, we > can discuss the code changes required to handle the new layer > definitions. Everything else depends on getting this correct. Here is > a sample layer definition: > > (layers > (15 F.Cu signal) > (0 B.Cu signal) > (16 B.Adhes user) > (17 F.Adhes user) > (18 B.Paste user) > (19 F.Paste user) > (20 B.SilkS user) > (21 F.SilkS user) > (22 B.Mask user) > (23 F.Mask user) > (24 Dwgs.User user) > (25 Cmts.User user) > (26 Eco1.User user) > (27 Eco2.User user) > (28 Edge.Cuts user) > ) > > From the discussion, it sounds like we would need to add an F.KeepOut > and B.KeepOut for courtyard areas. Maybe add F.KeepOutZ and B.KeepOutZ > for vertical keep out areas to prevent pick & place machine plunger > crashes on tall components. It also sounds like folks are interested in > naming layers so we can optionally add a (name "My Layer Name") element > to the layer. This would allow users to define their own names for > display purposes. The only thing I'm not sure of is layer pairing that > was being discussed. I would need a example of how that could be used. > So that would give us something like: > > (layers > (15 F.Cu signal (name "Front copper layer")) > (0 B.Cu signal) > (16 B.Adhes user) > (17 F.Adhes user) > (18 B.Paste user) > (19 F.Paste user) > (20 B.SilkS user) > (21 F.SilkS user) > (22 B.Mask user) > (23 F.Mask user) > (24 Dwgs.User user) > (25 Cmts.User user (name "I put my comments here!")) > (26 Eco1.User user) > (27 Eco2.User user) > (28 Edge.Cuts user) > (33 F.KeepOut user) # This could be any number > 32 > (34 B.KeepOut user) # This could be any number > 32 > (35 F.KeepOutZ user) # This could be any number > 32 > (36 B.KeepOutZ user) # This could be any number > 32 > ) > > You could use *.KeepOut and *.KeepOutZ for any module drawing element > (lines, arcs, circles, etc.) that are defined on both sides of a board. > > This should be a good start to get the discussion moving in the right > direction. > > Wayne > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
