kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 12:57:19PM +0200, Fabrizio Tappero wrote:
> Any feedback would be great.

OK, here's how other do it (some personal experience and some search on
the net):

- Eagle is the worst of all; it only has the 'layer setup' dialog and
  the layer numbers are more a convention than a strict rule. Layer
  numbers are highlighted with the system colour when visibile, and
  that's all. Bonus: you can have stipple patterns on them :P

- Gerbtool (is a CAM, so more like a gerber viewer): redisplay is
  *always* manual (at least in this version, it a from 12 years ago!);
  also is extremely slow to redraw... Layer name is show as a tooltip on
  the button, the two colours are flash and trace colour (in a CAM it's
  important to see the difference). Click on a colour to change. The
  button shows layer status (click the button to switch): red border is
  editable, black border read only, no border hidden. The green dot
  shows that the layer is not empty. The current layer is shown in
  a combo box in the main toolbar. Other than selecting from the combo
  you can double click the button to activate a layer

- CAM350 (a CAM, too), has a more 'advanced' (i.e. slow :D) GUI; it
  flickers like hell when using *anything*. Click on the name to change
  layer, unless it's an empty or hidden layer (as shown). The current
  layer it the one with the 'hammer' icon. The 'teardrop' icon indicates
  readonly layers (the underlying metaphores escape me...). The cute
  drawing shows trace and flash colours. Hiding a layer hides the whole
  drawing, so the colour will be a surprise :D clicking on the drawing
  pop up the layer menu (even a left click!) with a colour palette and
  commands to show/hide/show only this and so on. I would have liked
  a more useful left click default instead of the menu, like
  a show/hide.

- PADS layout (I don't have this, a colleague of mine explained it to
  me). Current layer is on a combo box in the main tool bar, there is
  a toggle for single layer/transparent view operation and for colour
  configuration there is a *huge* matrix with a colour for each of the
  layer/item combination. Given the price tag there is a lot of
  flexibility but I don't think there is a lot of usability here...

- Altium designer: looked up the manual on the net, the multilayer view
  is more or less like the high contrast in kicad. The also have a cute
  'lens' gimmick :P the layer selection is actually a note tab along the
  bottom border, the bold layer is the current one. I'm not very happy
  about having them horizontally (what about a lot of layers?). There is
  a big preference dialog box for setting colours and visibility (but
  I bet you can change them with a right click on the layer tab).

So if we wanted to 'restyle' the layer toolbox to gain more space
I think that we should rework the swatch button in something
'multifunctional' like the CAM350 one. Please no hammers or teardrops in
there:D

That aside, I think the functionality of the toolbox is quite good
already (except for the third button thing...); we *could* gain a little
space integrating the checkboxes in the swatch... however since wx
already handles resizing the bar (and most display are made wide these
days) wouldn't be a lot easier to handle the resize layout? I don't know
wx but with GTK you could simply designate the name column as 'filler'
and it would automatically enlarge!

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl

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Attachment: gerbtool.png
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