kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 01:07:15PM -0400, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> I'm going to side with Brian on this one.  I don't want the position of
> my reference designators changed from where *I* put them irregardless of
> the plot type.  I really don't care what the IPC rule is.  If I didn't
> want the there, I would have put them somewhere else.  If you saw how
> small the boards I lay out are, you would understand how silly this rule is.

We just agreed on that, and I already backed off the patch. I don't know
your boards but mine usually are so full that there is no place
whatsoever for reference designators:D So I size the silk as for
assembly rules (and plot the assembly big enough to use it). If you read
the article for sub 0603 parts the assembly package is actually
*enlarged* to make space for the text! (luckily never had the need for
them...)

> This this the problem with most standards.  There are always use cases
> which the implementer could not foresee that make the standard
> impossible follow thereby rendering it useless or even worse an
> impediment from getting something useful accomplished.

Well, at least IPC is a voluntary standard; they make your board even if
it doesn't comply (usually). However I find most of it quite useful and
well tought. Also, it's the only standard we have around:P

> I think Orson was (is?) working on the module editor which addressed
> some of these issues.

Yesterday I checked and there was no way to choose the layer for the
text. Should be easily done, however. I'm more worried about how the
rest of kicad reacts to text on different layers (like the picking
code).

> The library developers would have to agree on a layer to add the
> assembly text and update the footprints accordingly.

I'd say the fabrication layer, since it was added exactly for that
reason...

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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