kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Werner Almesberger <werner@...>]

Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> (units mil)
> (resolution 10)
> (const variable_def 30.4)

Do you really need the resolution if you already have floating-point
and a free choice of units ?

> We really don't need much in terms of expression support. Simple mx+b 
> support is about all for positioning a pad with given shape.

Yes, you usually don't need higher math. If you want to stay close to
the respective reference material (i.e., use the same parameters as a
basis), you may need to add or subtract distances and quite often
divide them by two. Multiplications come in the form of
dimension*integer or dimension*(integer+/-0.5).

Things get a little more interesting if you want to create more than
one footprint from a single definition, e.g., DIL/SIOC/SSOP/QFN/etc.
families. Also, large BGAs are basically begging for some nestable
loop construct.

What's your opinion on measurements ? E.g., like here:
http://kicad.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Footprints

But I think they were drawn manually, so there's no automatic
correlation of the numbers displayed and the real distance.

For comparison, all the measurements shown here are automatic (and
adding a measurement is a matter of seconds):
http://people.openmoko.org/werner/gta02-core/gta02-core-modules.pdf

> KISS. 

Yup, as simple as possible but not simpler :)

- Werner