kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[mdoesbur@xxxxxxxxx]

Hallo Wayne,

Sorry for the repeat message, but I never managed to subscribe to the
mailing list using my usual e-mail account.

I would be glad to elaborate on that. But the main point is that for
power electronics a net clearance is not all that usefull. The simplest
example is when you have a DC-DC converter which is supposed to have 4kV
isolation between input and output, but both the primary and secondary
circuits are 12V.

Another example is a high voltage half bridge. You have for example the
1kV and the 0V rail, and a switching node which is either 1kV or 0V. This
switching node has a gate driver attached to it which is low voltage (for
example 12V) within itself and needs only 0.2mm clearance. The gate driver
group of nets needs 3.2mm clearance from both the 1kV and 0V rail however.

What Eagle does is that you can have 32 netclasses (I need more please
;-) ). A clearance matrix gives the clearance between the netclasses
(and within the netclass itself on the diagonal), obviously this matrix
is symmetric.

regards,

Mark

Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

        Hey Mark,

        Will do.  This will give us a chance to better understand how to even
        map this over to KiCad.  I'm still no sure I even understand what is
        meant by netclass to netclass clearance.

        Cheers,

	Wayne