kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[JESSICH Jasmin <Jasmin.JESSICH@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi!

This is my first message to this list, so let me introduce myself.

I live in Vienna, Austria, so please be lenient with my English.
I am a SW developer since 24 years. I am working in the telecommunication
area since my first contact with SW. In the beginning assembler and then in
C/C++.
Currently my daily business is Kernel driver developing and I did the design and
implementation of the communication protocol of our system. The latter in C++.
And yes, I am a girl and maybe the first girl in the team, when I look to all the
team names ;)

I am completely new to KiCAD, but I want to add some features, which I thing
are missing. I know Autocad Inventor and a little bit of Eagle.
And why I am starting with the module editor although I have no practice with
KiCAD or board development? Because I work on diving equipment in my
spare time and need a PCB. So I needed an EDA tool. I selected KiCAD, because
it is the best Open Source tool and I like the Open Source thought. During my
first tests I came quickly to the point to dram a new part and so I found some
missing issues in the module editor.

I started to compile the testing version and was surprised with new things. I
liked the new feature to show the solder mask and other layers in the module
editor in the 3D Viewer. 

The problem:
I wonder why the solder mask was so big. It was illogical for me that the size
wasn't changed with the settings dialog. Moreover, after setting them and
program restart, the size was still the same (default).
So I tracked it down to the design settings and here to m_SolderMaskMargin,
which is initialized with its default in any case.
The default comes from moduleframe.cpp/181, where a new board is allocated.

Is there any reason, why it doesn't use the settings from the current board?
Once the module editor board is allocated, it uses always the same empty
board. This means the values are never changed.

Any hint if I shall try to add this feature and how would be the best way to do
it? I mean, how the core developers would like to see this implemented.

BR
   Jasmin