kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Simon Richter <Simon.Richter@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On 12.06.2016 22:22, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:

> Plotting is definitely more accurate than printing although I wont
> completely rule it out.  I make a lot of prototype boards and I've found
> through trial and error the plotting is the way to go.

I think it is wrong in both dialogs.

Whether vias are tented is a property of the via first, and to make it
easier to use, a default setting should be attached to the board itself.
Any hardcopy or data export should respect that.

I agree that the "Print" function is wrong for exporting
machine-readable files for the next processing steps. "Print" is useful
for human-readable hardcopies, which may also be used for proofreading,
so it would make sense to have non-tented vias show up as holes in the
soldermask there.

Ideally the export dialog would only list options that are important for
fabrication, but do not affect the board itself, such as whether certain
layers should be mirrored or not. Whether vias are tented is largely
customer choice, except if the fab house cannot accomodate that, so it
should be configured somewhere before that.

The question is where this setting should be placed, as we don't have a
real "board options" dialog yet -- the design rules or layer setup
dialogs are probably closest.

   Simon

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