kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(back on the internet, slowly reading more emails)

I agree that the storage method should be changed.  Thanks for taking this
on, Seth.

I am curious why start-midpoint-end is better than start-center-end, though.
I think the latter is used more often in mcad tools, although I could be
wrong.
Having a non-rounded center point stored seems like it could be useful if
the center point location is important to the arc geometry (for example, if
it's supposed to be snapped onto another point).
I can't think of why having the mid-angle point being stored precisely
would be as useful.

$0.02
-Jon

On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 1:26 PM Seth Hillbrand <seth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Devs-
>
> I'd like to adjust how our arcs are handled and stored.  This is part of
> the arc tracks work package but is sufficiently tangential that I think
> it bears checking before I implement.
>
> Problem: Arcs are stored in the pcbnew file using center, start point
> and arc angle.  This leaves the end point of the arc subject to rounding
> errors.  This causes problems in STEP export as well as (for the arc
> tracks) connectivity issues as dragging requires point matching, not
> just copper overlap.
>
> Proposed solution: I would like to adjust the pcbnew file format and
> internal SHAPE_ARC, DRAWSEGMENT arc and EDGE_MODULE arc to use a single
> format consisting of start point, mid point and end point.  Mid point
> here is defined as the point along the arc that is at the half-angle of
> the full arc.
>
> In this case, the values used and saved for connectivity and edge
> continuity will be fixed.  The center point of the arc may vary due to
> rounding issues but arc will remain continuous with its neighboring
> segments.  Since the mid point of the arc is also saved, we closely
> constrain the arc extent as well.
>
> To get the arc center in this case (for drawing/plotting), we would use
> GetArcCenter() from trigo.cpp.
>
> Does anyone have objections to this course of action?  If not, I'll send
> around the patch for testing before pushing.
>
> Best-
> Seth
>
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