Hello.
Sombody contacted me with a problem printing mounting holes at KiCAD. He
tries to make them as single round Pad with same drill diameter and pad
diameter, so the annular would be zero.
But getting this out, he got a very very thin annular at the cooper
layers, creating some trouble and rework.
I do not really know, what he is doing exactly, because i do not knew
anybody else, who has the same problem.
Another guy who is using 20090216-final told as a tip, to uncheck al
cooper layers, when editing the pad. This seems to work at the old
20090216-final, but at the new BZR2356 fom 05 Mai 2010, this will not
work, because you get an error message, if you have not choosen any
cooper layer.
But he can import an old pad, created by this way, an use it. He can use
it as a device, canging value and reference, but he cannot change the
diameter, because this would mean to edit the pad, getting this error
message.
I searched for a workaround, and found this:
1. Create a single round pad with a hole of your wanted diameter.
Perhaps choose same drill diameter and pad diameter, but this it not
essential at last.
2. Name it "hole" and save it.
3. Open the library, where you saved it (make a safety copy first!) with
an text editor.
Now somewhere you will find the device "hole" at the text as:
$MODULE hole
Po 0 0 0 15 4BFFD155 00000000 ~~
Li hole
Sc 00000000
AR
Op 0 0 0
T0 0 -2000 600 600 0 120 N V 21 N"hole"
T1 0 2000 600 600 0 120 N V 21 N"VAL**"
$PAD
Sh "1" C 394 394 0 0 0
Dr 394 0 0
At STD N 0030FFFF
Ne 0 ""
Po 0 0
$EndPAD
$EndMODULE hole
4. Nnow change the line
"At STD N 0030FFFF"
to
"At STD N 00000000"
This will create a hole with no layers at all.
As an alternative, change the line
"At STD N 0030FFFF"
to
At STD N 01000000"
This will create a hole with an annular at the drawings layer.
("At STD N 00010000" will do the same at layer glue bottom and
"At STD N 00100000" will do the same at layer silkscreen bottom, for
whom it concerns)
5. Write and save the file.
6. Use this hole just as a device.
So he would be also able to use the layer drawings to print the annulars
out, so he can see them and use them as drilling template.
He will be also able to create a library with different drill diameters,
to get easy access to this mounting holes. He edit this holes as a
device, moving them around and canging value and reference, but he
cannot change the diameter, because this would mean to edit the pad,
getting this error message and preventing him to go on.
What do you think? Any further suggestings for him? He suggests to make
a function "hole" which means really a hole without cooper at all.
I wonder, that this seems to be really a problem for him, and i am prone
to suggest changing the errormessage to a warning. So it would be able
to switch off cooper layers.
For whom who understand german: You can read this discussion at
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/179308#1726876
With best regards: Bernd Wiebus alias dl1eic
