kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[jean-pierre charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 08:18:15AM +0200, Miguel Angel Ajo Pelayo wrote:
> > Hi Samuel, I also had the same problem recently (making a high power led
> > controller   3x8A channels), and people complain from time to time about
> > this issue,
> >
> > I'd be willing to see this working, but as far as I know there are
> > many issues to take care of:
> > cleanup code (as lorenzo said), clearance, etc. I have very little
>
> > From the code it seems that it 'emulates' the via command from keyboard,
> so clearance should be checked inside. I had troubles with cleanup in
> the past but IIRC there was some reworking in the area recently, so it
> may work fine.

Currently Pcbnew assumes tracks ( vias are seen as tracks) are connected to pads,
i.e. a floating track is seen as not connected ( does not have a net name ).

Net names are fully (re)attributed to tracks when recalculating the connectivity of the board:
after loading the board or a netlist, or when you run a DRC.

You can run the full board DRC if you want to do floating vias/tracks lose the net name.

As a consequence,
because Pcbnew removes all floating solid copper zones (I am thinking this is a great feature),
areas are filled only if a pad/track/via is found inside the area, because a track *is expected*
to be not floating.

Fix the loss of net name it not very easy:
the more easy, but need work:
how do you know a via/track is floating or not and keep the net name if it is "not floating" ?
the more tricky:
find floating solid copper zones needs to rewrite (or seriously patch) the connectivity calculations.
One cannot allows copper filled areas left floating.

I also should say I do not understand why it is so hard to start a track from a pad,
and then press the v key to insert a via, as many times as you want.

--
Jean-Pierre CHARRAS