kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 03:59:17PM +0200, Simon Schubert wrote:
>
> What do other developers think?  Using a polygon line on a specific
> layer might work.  The problem I can see is that all layers are sort of
> spoken for...

Sort of is not clear... *every* layer is taken:P:P

Or, better: there actually are 3 unused layers in pcbnew but layer logic
(especially flipping logic) is currently dispersed so it's not easy to
handle new layer (courtyard was another addition, for example)

There was some work for 'unlimited layers' support (I for example have
typedef-ed both the layer and layer mask to ease migration to another
datatype) but nothing was merged in main. AFAIK reasons are:

1) the new pcb file format (currently layers are saved as a 32bit hex),
   so we are (rightly IMHO)  not very keen on changing a format slated
   for obsolescence

and

2) a proposal to remove layer masks/set and replacing it with multiple
   layer numbers and ranges (I feel that masks are a better idea...)

In short, I think that the whole layer machinery needs work before being
able to be easily extended (heck, even microstation allowed a finite
number of layers until V8 IIRC!)

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl