kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Seth,

I think that’s two different questions.

The old method had the segment count per-zone, as it was highly dependant on the radius of the fillet (or the radius of any board edge the zone ran in to).   The new method doesn’t have to deal with that — it solely controls speed vs. smoothness.  As such, it should be a board setting, not a zone setting.

As for progressive disclosure, I’m torn.  The second column of controls largely parallels the Clearance and Settings tabs of Footprint Properties and Pad Properties.  So I think there would be value in placing them in a similarly layed-out Clearance and Settings tab.  Trouble is, those are probably the common options, rather than the advanced settings.

By “visual indicators” are you talking about a zone preview?  That would be really cool.  Note that we could also free up space by going to the new Net Selector.  It’s filter is less powerful than the one in the Zone Settings dialog, but is it powerful enough?  (To be honest I’ve never used the filtering options in Zone Settings, while I use the Net Selector filter constantly.)

Note that if we do implement progressive disclosure it should be through a tab or turn-down arrow (a la the error dialog), not a standard button.

Cheers,
Jeff.


> On 16 Oct 2018, at 03:44, Seth Hillbrand <seth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Am Mo., 15. Okt. 2018 um 17:29 Uhr schrieb Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jeff@xxxxxxxxx>>:
> Hmmm... I note looking at the code that we do read the old segment count and if it’s <= 24 we use a 0.02mm acceptable error and if it’s greater than 24 we use a 0.005mm.  We could put a high/low resolution setting back in the dialog (and write out 16 or 32 to keep from having to change the file format).
> 
> Or we could just use a 0.01mm error for everything.
> 
> I'd really like to avoid a fixed, unsettable tolerance on this.  If you open demos/sonde xilinx and look at the knockout around R13 (bottom of the board), you'll see the issue.  There are 16, very visible segments around the knockout for the through-holes there and the user can no longer adjust them away.
> 
> Do you (or other interested parties) have objection to my moving some of the settings behind an "Advanced Settings" button?  Part of this would be to focus the dialog on common options and part of this would be to open up space in the dialog for visual indicators of what the settings are.
> 
> -S