kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Tomasz Wlostowski <tomasz.wlostowski@xxxxxxx>]

On 12.01.2016 17:31, Chris Pavlina wrote:
> TBH I've never personally needed overlapping zones of the same net, 
> layer, and priority myself, though - I'm sure if I ever encountered such 
> a need, I'd find it very annoying. ;)

Hi Chris,

I often need overlapping zones for complex split planes (Kicad doesn't
support them ... yet), because it's easier to edit/modify multiple
smaller pieces rather than a big plane spanning entire board. It's a
matter of taste, though.

I noticed, however, that if a zone is connected to another zone, but not
any pad/track/via, it is not filled (= pcbnew doesn't see it's connected
to any pin). Maybe this is the 1st reason why pcbnew automatically
merges all overlapping zones?

> 
> Perhaps a mode to select the behavior would be useful. Most graphics 
> applications have this for things like selections - drawing a selection 
> can usually replace, add to, or subtract from the existing selection. 
> Something like that for zones could be very useful, IMO, and it's a 
> familiar UI element to anyone who's done graphics editing.

For the moment, GAL canvas lets the user merge multiple zones upon
request (select a number of zones, R-click->Zones->Merge Zones).

Tom