kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 2:42 AM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Maybe.  That's the best I can do.  During the current development cycle,
> there will be an big emphasis on finishing the GAL implementation on
> Pcbnew and giving Eeschema some much need love including a major code
> refactor, new s-expr file format, and I/O plugin manager.  The new
> schematic and symbol library file formats will allow us to provide pin
> and gate swapping between the schematic and board editors and some other
> features as well.  There is also a rework of the 3D model support as
> well.  This is a huge amount of work and given the amount of manpower we
> have, I would say the RF support most like wont happen this dev cycle.
> We have to design and code polygon on copper support in Pcbnew which I
> will be very picky about the design given the potential impact on the
> long term maintainability of the project.  Given that we still have a
> good bit of work to do on Pcbnew, I would rather get that squared away
> before moving forward on RF support.  RF support has been discussed and
> will happen at some point.  My crystal ball just isn't that clear on RF
> support just yet.
>
>
Polygon on copper? With numerous questions in the past about "XXX-shaped
pad"
and curved tracks I was thinking of how track segments and pads could be
represented in such a way as to make DRC easy to support while allowing
circular arcs within a track and greater flexibility on pad shapes. One
possibility
that came to mind was to have a simple 2D geometry framework to support
tracks
and pad outlines. If pads create a representation of themselves which
consists of
contiguous circular arcs and line segments and tracks represent themselves
as
circular arcs and line segments + width then a minimal 2D geometry engine
can be used for collision and clearance tests. With support for only line
segments
and circular arc segments the maths is somewhat trivial. If people want
crazy
tracks like spirals they would either have to use multiple circular arc
segments to
approximate the spiral or we'd need to introduce a NURBS segment - that
jacks
the complexity of a 2D geometry kit, but so long as we don't have NURBS
everything is good. :)   Just imagine how Tom's length tuning code can
benefit
from using circular arc tracks rather than numerous straight segments + the
computational savings on DRC when checking such wavy tracks. Of course
while the minimal 2D geom kit may be coded in under a week, actually
integrating it with KiCad would be an enormous task. However there are
benefits;
for example if text were represented as an outline of line and arc segments
then
we would eliminate a lot of the many-segment representations (less memory
usage) and any collision/clearance checks will be analytically exact. Also,
arbitrary non-self-intersecting polygon areas would be trivial to add onto
copper
layers while maintaining the ability to perform a clearance check.

- Cirilo



> FYI everyone, my response is not a license to flood the mailing list
> with your wishes for the new dev cycle.  I do not have time right now to
> discuss it thoroughly and most of your suggestions and comments will get
> lost in the noise.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Wayne
>
> On 12/4/2015 4:55 PM, easyw wrote:
> > Hi,
> > are there plans to improve RF support after the stable release had come
> > out?
> >
> > That would be nice to have:
> >  - square-ended tracks
> >  - chamfered track corners
> >  - conditional track length min/max rule
> >  - via shields
> >  - improving DXF shapes import
> >
> > Maurice
> >
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