kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cheng Sheng <jeru.sheng@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi KiCad Developers,

I made a feature for my own hobbyist use (to etch my own PCB boards). I
don't know how much the community welcomes such hobbyist-oriented features.
So I'd like to ask the mail-list before I send out a pull request. Guess
the answer leans positive because I already saw some hobbyist-friendly
features inside the "File->Print" dialog of pcbnew (eg., small drill).

The use-case: vias of hobby-etched PCBs are usually hand-soldered with a
wire (I suppose most hobbyists don't eletroplate their through-holes), thus
needs to be exposed on the solder mask layers. Currently, the printed
images don't have vias on the solder mask layers.

(It is still doable on the current version to produce a desired F.Mask or
B.Mask image by hacking the Gerber files, by overlaying a hacked drill file
on a mask Gerber file, and exporting in the Gerber viewer. But this is too
many steps to do.)

Happily finding how easy it is to compile KiCad source code, I decide to
add the required functionality myself. Here it is:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~jeru-sheng/kicad/kicad-feature/revision/6924

What it does is: If a via appears on F.Cu layer, print it also on F.Mask
layer; same for B.Cu layer via on B.Mask layer.

The new functionality is controllable in "File->Print" menu as a check box:
[image: Inline image 1]

Given the following pcb traces:
[image: Inline image 4]

When the check box is off:
[image: Inline image 2]

When it is on:
[image: Inline image 3]
(so it seems the vias are on all copper layers, even if the traces it is
connected to are not on all layers).

And this does not affect Gerber plot even when the check box is on:
[image: Inline image 5]

Look forward to hearing back.

Regards,
Cheng Sheng