kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[jp charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Le 04/07/2019 à 11:28, Jeff Young a écrit :
> A general-purpose way to solve this occurred to me:
> 
> 1) we’ve talked about having user-defined attributes on footprints — but
> they should really be on all items
> 2) then in Jon’s new DRC language we could define a clearance: * to
> *[@mousebite] (using XPath syntax ‘cause I can’t remember what Jon’s
> looked like)
> 
> Cheers,
> Jeff.
> 

The Margin layer (existing since a long time) was primarily intended to
define a clearance area on all layers.

Its purpose is to define a clearance area similar to a edge cut item,
but without the constrains of a edge cut item, that is used primarily to
define the board outline.
It is similar to a keepout zone, but in many cases more easy create and
edit, for basic shapes like segments

This layer is not activated in code but this is easy:
- This is a matter of a few lines of change.
- does not modify the file format.
- items are perfectly visible on board and easily editable.

Some other ECAD tools have this kind of feature.

Of course one can add attributes to any board item.
But they are invisible, and are easily removed when editing the board.

So they are less than ideal, and if exists, must me carefully used, and
rarely.


-- 
Jean-Pierre CHARRAS