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At 11:39 AM 10/4/01 +1000, Geoff Harland wrote: >What I was saying previously was that the RS274X standard does not support >"flashing" thermal relief patterns having just two openings. Given that >situation, the associated arcs (of these patterns) should (normally) be >"drawn" instead. RS-274X has a primitive called a "thermal," yes, and it has four spokes by nature. But RS-274X was designed to be *very* flexible, so basically *any* shape can be defined as an aperture macro. When Protel allowed differing numbers of spokes (many programs don't), it is rather obvious that no one ever told the people writing the photoplot routines. This has been broken, I suspect, for a long time. Ultimately, I think we should go to defined padstacks, the existing Protel pad shapes are one of the major limitations of the program. I would definitely use a chamfered rectangle (kind of like an "octagon" should be, but not regular and not broken) if Protel supported it. I used the Tango "rounded rectangle" all the time. (that's a rectangle with rounded corners). Yes, padstacks are complicated but if the program automatically generated padstacks to match the existing status quo, but then we could lift the hood and edit and modify or add to those padstacks, we'd have our cake and full stomachs as well, to mix a few metaphors. So the photoplot routines could simply define a macro where the existing basic RS274X shapes won't work, and then flash the macro code. Easy peasy, best of both worlds: a drawn shape but compact plot files. (As an aside, such creatures would make back-conversion from Gerber easier, because they would define a connection to the plane just as a thermal presently defines such a connection. Drawn thermals are harder to recognise automatically.) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Abdulrahman Lomax Easthampton, Massachusetts USA * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
