kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At least I got pcbnew compiled :P luckily the new design wasn't too much
incompatible with mine so probably I'll fix my old files with some
search and replace...

What is for this new layer I see? the tooltip says "board's edge setback
outline"... is that a kind of new technical layer for drc or what?

Also I have seen that the new layer pairs CrtYd (courtyard, I presume...) and
Fab (fabrication? the assembly layer?) are marked as 'footprint only' in
the include (there are no checkboxes in the layer bar either for them).

What would be the rationale for this design choice? I wonder if there is
a specific reason to not handling them on the main board... In the past year
I found that:

- The courtyard is most useful during placement (well, actually it's
  only needed for that) , so it's useful to see on the main screen when
  moving stuff;

- The fabrication outline is often more useful than the silk one when
  routing: you see the full component instead of the 'mounting bracket',
  it's easier to stand clear of noisy part that way...

As for putting entities *directly* on these layers (like text or
graphics lines) I agree that there is no sense for having them on
courtyard (you can put text on paste and mask, anyway...); for
fabrication I never used it but probably there could be some utility for
accepting text and lines on it (since it's essentially like the silk
layer).

BTW I already have the code for the special plot handling for the
reference on the fabrication layers (i.e. forced visibility and position
to the part anchor). Need to port the condition to the new layer
operators but shouldn't be too difficult.

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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