kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 09:58:50PM +0200, Miguel Angel Ajo Pelayo wrote:

> In fact, I already tried to extend to make the gerber outputs once (as
> Lorenzo is doing right now) and I was defeated..

Defeated following pointers while searching stuff ?:P:P

The 'big thing' missing from our gerber generator at the moment
(negative planes excluded since that's a way bigger issue) is aperture
macro generation, for at least the common shape we use.

At the moment both rotated rectangular pads and trapezoidal/triangular
pads are not flashed but drawn as filled polygons (they can't be done
without AM). This gave all kinds of problem with postprocessors and
board testers, since they don't 'see' them as pads.

Other than that, other useful pad shapes we could implement are:

- Fingers, or D-pads (have better adhesion and soldering properties than
  rectangular ones for SMD). At the moment you can do them perfectly
  with a rectangle and a circle (but appear twice in the tester netlist...)

- Rectangular-with-a-notch which is a very common thermal pad (also
  shows pin 1 position). Can be done with a rectangle and a trapeze
  (this gives issues...)

Then there is the dream of the arbitrary shaped pad but it's a lot of
work (also relatively less useful). Before these we'll need selective
tenting of vias (and filler dispensing plots). High power stuff to make
heat go away XD

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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