kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jun 04, 2014 at 02:09:00PM -0400, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> There are two separate concepts of layers.  The layers defined in a
> board and layers assigned to footprint elements.  When you design a
> footprint, you don't necessarily know what board layer(2) the pads are
> going to be placed on.  This information gets changed in the module
> sexpr when the footprint is placed on the board.  There has to be some
> mechanism to ensure that there is not a disconnect between the board
> layers and the footprint (module) layers.

Yes, that also was discussed a while ago. The current mechanism is:
- Copper layers take the 'standard english' names
- Other layers take the 'sacred name' i.e. the standard english anyway:P

> There is nothing preventing us from extending the layer sepr definition.
>  We could add user defined names to the layer definition without
> breaking the existing internal layer notation.  We could also add the
> concept of pairing as well.

I have proposed many alternatives in the past to reconcile layers
mismatch. I forgot most of them... the simplest one of course is the
altium one 'decide and be doomed forever with your choice'. Otherwise
you need to merge and create layers dynamically on mismatch (based on
name, probably). Anyway some kind of 'layerset object' needs to be
created to keep the mappings (IIRC this is done by the BOARD object, at
the moment).

That's why I asked for a more detailed specification of what's needed
and what's not... use cases would be enlightening.

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl