kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Blair Bonnett <blair.bonnett@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 3 August 2014 12:09, Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo_bernardo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I received a request for a feature some months ago.  The idea is to provide
> an underlay image to help people duplicate existing board designs, for
> example
> when duplicating old circuits to refurbish a device or to recreate the PCB
> artwork when all you have are old gerber files or perhaps printouts of the
> gerber images, or cutouts from electronics hobbyist magazines.
>
> I believe this can be implemented by:
>
> 1. adding a checkbox to the bitmap tool to write to an 'Underlay' layer
> instead of to F.SilkS
>
> 2. reserving one of the spare layers as 'Underlay'. This layer will be the
> first rendered and will never be plotted or printed.
>
> Any comments/suggestions/objections?
>
> - Cirilo


I like the idea, but am curious as to how you intend it to be used with
multiple layers (e.g., an underlay for both top and bottom copper). Maybe a
list of bitmaps assigned to the layer with the ability to toggle between
them?

Will there be any scaling or offset options when importing the bitmaps, or
will the user need to prepare them correctly using an image editor prior to
loading them into Kicad?

Regards,
Blair