kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Vesa Solonen <vsolonen@...>]

There is some refining in polygon code I'm going to do, but first I'd
like to get some discussion about the implementation. Jean-Pierre, are
you going to work on arc support in the near future? That's because
taking care for dynamic p-p error in polygons is going to be quite a lot
more work than just small enhancements and I'd like to avoid doing work
many times...

First, I was going to move arc approximation starting point half angle
increment away from Y or X axis. That would give a bit more space
between adjacent cutouts and minimise discontinuities in fill. That's
something I don't need help at (I guess).

Vertex caching would possibly give the needed boost for performance. My
initial thought was to convert every cutout to vertex vector. In case of
the thermals the result would be vector array or table of four vectors.
Positioning and maybe also rotating is done outside the individual
primitive functions along caching. Per pin thermal topology defines
would be nice too.

I've been also thinking teardrop support by polygons for via/pad to
track connections and if there is any pointers how to get track
direction and width easily please pass on.

Why would I like these features? Because of the etching process (sharp)
_inner_ corners are bad. They over etch and the worst thing is that they
tend to retain process chemicals because of surface tension and what
not. Over etching can be controlled by clever additives, but residues
are considered harmful for reliability. I'm also quite confident that
microwave guys would like arcs.

-Vesa