kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For the graphics performance point, do we want to go the "solidworks way"
of giving many settings to tweak performance, and letting users figure out
what works for them?

I can think of at least two alternatives:

1) automatic performance tuning based on self-benchmarking

2) a "graphics performance" setting (high/medium/low) that changes multiple
things under the hood.

-Jon

On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 2:36 PM Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Seth,
>
> On 5/16/19 1:29 PM, Seth Hillbrand wrote:
> > Am 2019-05-16 08:44, schrieb Seth Hillbrand:
> >> Am 2019-05-16 08:31, schrieb Wayne Stambaugh:
> >>> Seth,
> >>>
> >>> I took a look at this and it looks fine to me.  Refresh my memory, is
> >>> this change to reduce the number of arc segments to help address the
> >>> performance issues on complex boards or is this change for some other
> >>> reason?
> >>
> >> Correct, this reduces the complexity of boards by reducing the number
> >> of segments needed to approximate small radius curves.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Hi All-
> >
> > The next step in this is to remove the segment count setting from the
> > file format.  I have a baseline patch for this pushed to my segments
> > branch at [1].  As this is a file format change, it makes sense to think
> > about whether we want to add a an option for the board maximum error at
> > the same time.
> >
> > Currently, we use 0.005mm as the maximum error for most items.  This
> > includes approximating arcs, inflating/deflating for clearances and
> > converting items to polygons for plotting.  It may make sense to make
> > this value a setting that is stored.  There are a few options I see:
> >
> > 1) Put the value in the board file directly.  This might make sense
> > because it is used to figure out the copper fills that are stored in the
> > file.  But the value itself doesn't directly alter the physical aspect
> > of the board.
> >
> > 2) Put the value in the board settings.  This would be alongside things
> > like layer visibility and plot settings.
> >
> > 3) Put the value in the user settings. This would be alongside things
> > like anti-alias settings.
> >
> > If we go with option (3), we could have a separate value that controls
> > the plot output settings stored like (2) so that two users working on
> > the same board would get the same output.
> >
> >
> >
> > Thoughts?
> > -Seth
> >
> > [1] https://code.launchpad.net/~sethh/kicad/+git/kicad/+ref/segments
>
> If this setting has any affect on the board output (gerbers) then it
> belongs in 1.
>
> Otherwise, I don't have a preference.  You could argue option 2 since
> this setting seems like it would be board complexity dependent rather
> than application dependent.  I other words, you might want to allow more
> error for rendering on a complex board and less error for a simple
> board.  You could just as easily argue that it's your system that is
> slow and it should be an application setting (3).
>
> Wayne
>
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