kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pierre,

I can use this feature on about 1/2 of all the boards we are currently doing, so it is a
useful feature.

I think now, before your patch, you can measure the current length of tracks, but it is
not interactive, and sometimes it gives you the length of a segment rather than the entire
track.  I have not mastered it, or there's a minor bug, wasn't sure.


In any case yours will be a useful improvement.


Dick





On 04/16/2014 01:33 PM, Pierre Parent wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've sent to production my first length matched board, here is a picture! I 
> hope it will work!
> 
> I've looked at the branch drawing tool. It seems pretty accessible. I'll try 
> to do it when I have time. There are also improvements I would like to make to 
> the length tuning tool.
> 
> Pierre.
> 
> 
> Le samedi 12 avril 2014 21:03:51, vous avez écrit :
>> On 04/11/2014 06:44 PM, Pierre Parent wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Im' new here. My name is Pierre. I've started to develop for kicad a tool
>>> for trace length tunning.
>>>
>>> Trace length tunning is an important tool which is lacking when designing
>>> more complex boards in particular board with DDR/DDR2/DDR3 ram. For
>>> example the board olinuxino imx 233 maxi, which is open hardware uses
>>> length tunned traces in Eagle. It is currently completely impossible to
>>> do similar thing with kicad even when spending lot of time on it.
>>>
>>> A bug was filled by other users:
>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/594089
>>>
>>> So my initial development was to stop the bleeding, and obviously it is
>>> very early version which can largely be improved in usability. Though for
>>> my use it is already suitable for DDR ram routing. Here are first
>>> results:
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWJyGpkZ6k4
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdQ-2EnWNkw
>>>
>>> I would appreciate any feedback, and advice. Do you think I should do a
>>> branch with my code (still buggy)? Also I think it would be nice to get
>>> it working with new component view, I don't think it would be hard. Has
>>> the microwave toolbox started to be ported? (it would give me an
>>> example).
>>>
>>> I think it would be good to make sure a length tunning tool (even minimal)
>>> is available in next kicad release, because it simply prevents to use
>>> kicad to design certain kind of boards.
>>>
>>> Pierre.
>>
>> Hi Pierre,
>>
>> I have seen your work presented in the bug report that you have created
>> before. It looks quite impressive, it is great to have more people
>> working on KiCad. I think the best way would be to integrate your code
>> with the Push and Shove router.
>> Currently, the microwave toolbox is not ported to the Tool Framework,
>> but all the other tools are already there. If you would like to have a
>> look on the code, the most interesting places are in the branch
>> lp:~cern-kicad/kicad/drawing_tool:
>> - the Tool Framework itself is located in common/tool
>> - tools for pcbnew are in pcbnew/tools
>> An example of initial steps to create a tool is available here:
>> https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~cern-kicad/kicad/drawing_tool/revision/4667.
>> If you need any help writing the tool using the framework, please do not
>> hesitate to ask - we are glad to help.
>> I have started writing a tutorial on creating new tools using the Tool
>> Framework, but then I realized that there are still ongoing changes and
>> it could become obsolete too early. Maybe now it is the right time to
>> finish it.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Orson
>>
>>
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