kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Brian Sidebotham <brian.sidebotham@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2 September 2013 10:39, Lorenzo Marcantonio
<l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 02, 2013 at 10:30:47AM +0100, Brian Sidebotham wrote:
> > I could really do with more layers too. Although when I say *more*
>  layers,
> > I mean that I could really do with dedicated assembly and courtyard
> layers.
>
> Exactly what I have done... probably for your same reasons, too.
>
> > The assembly layer needs the reference field on, as you say, at the
> > insertion point of the component as well as a physical bounding box; This
> > should flip when the component is flipped.
>
> Exactly, I added the courtyard front/back and assembly front/back,
> because this time I have a dual sided assembly.
>
> Drawing on assembly without the ability of turning off the silk
> however is painful. Well, the whole module editor become painful when
> you don't draw only on silk top.
>
>
Actually, I think I want to change my answer a bit. Because as I hinted, I
don't need more layers, I need better layer versatility. I want to be able
to rename layers (Already achievable!), but I also want to be able to
change a layer to mechanical, or non-copper if that's what my design
requires. 32-layers is really more than enough for almost any board
manufacturable.

All I really want to be able to do is assign names and properties to
layers. How KiCad arranges most of these layers within it's 32 layer limit
is not really my concern. Only the copper layer stack order is important,
and we already had identifiers for these in the new file formats so that we
can select all copper layers (regardless of the number of layers in the
current design).

So a layer in a module could just be a name that is then assigned to a
layer "number", or bitfield positon inside KiCad. Along with some
properties in the PCB KiCad would know whether this layer is paired with
any other layer and whether the layer is copper or not.

I think this has merit as opposed to simply fixing the number of layers to
a higher number and then assigning static layer numbers specific uses. It
would be much more versatile to have the additional properties for each
layer and to let KiCad fit them however it sees fit into the maximum number
of layers it can handle.

Perhaps I've not explained this too well, it is more a brain storm rather
than anything else - but it appears to stack up well against forever
increasing the width of a bitfield integer. But there would be plenty of
things to think about with regards to spelling differences and
abbreviations, etc. of layer names. Some sort of equivalence between layer
names in modules and PCB layout might be needed.

Best Regards,

Brian.