X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Cam-AntiVirus: no malware found X-Cam-ScannerInfo: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/scanner/ Message-ID: <1435268559.24445.13.camel@cam.ac.uk> Subject: Re: [geda-user] [RFC][PATCH] PCB: Allow non rounded clearances for rectangular/square pins and pads From: Peter Clifton To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2015 22:42:39 +0100 In-Reply-To: <20150625163731.GA18117@visitor2.iram.es> References: <20150625163731 DOT GA18117 AT visitor2 DOT iram DOT es> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.12.11-0ubuntu3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Thu, 2015-06-25 at 18:37 +0200, Gabriel Paubert (paubert AT iram DOT es) wrote: > Actually, I'm chasing the annoying bug that sometimes happens of a small > sliver of copper that creates shorts under very specific conditions and Did you try the patches I posted a while back... (15/02/2015). Email subject was "PCB users - Call for testing of polygon fixes" Unfortunately, I never quite finished cleaning up the remaining issues (mostly sanity checking the logic of a few things, and cleaning up some error-cases). The patches contain descriptions of the problems they fix, including some test-cases. From your description, it might be relevant to the bugs you mentioned. Perhaps you could see if they help in any of the files you have problems with). > I've been diving in the polygon code for 2 days and a half, because it > caused systematic problems when generating Gerber files for a moderately > complex board: 80x200mm, ~680 components, but "only" 2000 pads since it's > relativly high frequency (up to 1GHz) and roughly half the components are > capacitors of various sizes (60 of them 0201, the rest mostly 0603 with > quite a few 1206 and some 0402 thrown in, three EIA7343 tantalum). One interesting Gerber file issue, is that board houses sometimes use only "flashed" pads for generating automatic test programs for flying probe testers. PCB doesn't (IIRC) generate flashed pads, at least not for all shapes. - I've had at least one case (I think) where boards have "passed" automatic testing, with manufacturing defects still present, and I think the underlying cause may have been the fab house's inability to auto-extract the pad locations. Ultimately, the gerber output HID should create macros for any shapes it needs, and always flash pads. (Sadly I've no time to dive in myself). This would also significantly reduce file-size, keeping the existing clearance shapes. > Anyway, the patch is appended, it boils down to: > - adding a new flag called "squareclearance" that changes the behaviour > of the clearance for non-circular pads and pins. > - enable this feature by essentially copying the code fragments for the > "square" flag and renaming square to squarecleareance with appropriate > UPPER/lower/CamelCase. > - map the corresponding Toggle action to Alt-Q What was the use-case for this? (Stylistic, electrical design requirement, or workaround for the large / buggy gerber output?) I'm not against the possibility of this, but I do find the proliferation of flags somewhat distasteful. I guess we never did get around to that all encompassing file-format update. > - change some of the internal ABI of the polygon code that really > annoyed me, as well as reordering some structures for better packing. I'd be interested to see some/all of these change (clean or not), so I can inform myself before protesting against them ;). Ugly as the polygon code is, I've several WIP development branches that might be broken by major API changes. -- Peter Clifton Clifton Electronics