X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com From: Kai-Martin Knaak Subject: Re: [geda-user] when pcb disperse command loses elements Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 21:06:16 +0200 Organization: Institut =?UTF-8?B?ZsO8cg==?= Quantenoptik Lines: 55 Message-ID: References: <55E02536 DOT 8020202 AT envinsci DOT co DOT uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Complaints-To: usenet AT ger DOT gmane DOT org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 130.75.103.107 User-Agent: KNode/4.14.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id t7SJ6VHS001218 Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Matt Rhys-Roberts wrote: > I found that 'disperse all elements' causes some footprints to > disappear, unless I make my board size bigger. You probably identify the boundary of the working area with the boundary of your layout. This is the way how pcb behaves by default unless the user specifies an explicit boundary. To specify a boundary, just put a closed loop of tracks on a dedicated layer called "outline". The gerber export considers the middle of the tracks the outline of the layout and emits the respective commands. The outline can be any shape including arcs. I usually make the working area about triple width and height of the intended board size. This leaves enough room for all the dispersed components and an empty outline on the bottom half of the working area. > Q2) Please can anyone tell me how to select all component designators > within the range 100-199, or 200-299, etc? I'm having difficulty working > with the regex when using 'select by name'. Try this search string: [A-Z]*1[0-9][0-9] Translation: [A-Z] → any upper case letter * → the previous item as many times as can be fit. Includes zero times. 1 → the character "1" [0-9] → exactly one digit Because of the * the expression will also match strings like "PAD123". I too had a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around regular expressions. ---<)kaimartin(>--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak tel: +49-511-762-2895 Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik fax: +49-511-762-2211 Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de GPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=Knaak+kmk&op=get