kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Roberto Fernández Bautista <roberto.fer.bau@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Has anybody had a chance to check the draft document I made on Pad Stacks
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxBI7_X_I7pO-nuDHPRVlfRBH24XTmwuuN69o_Bqk3s/edit?usp=sharing>
?

I would like at least some feedback if this is the kind of document you
would be looking for, or if not what to change about it/what it should
focus on.

I'm keen on pad stacks in KiCad since CADSTAR heavily relies on them - at
the moment the importer wouldn't be able to handle complex cases.

I would like to help wherever I can to get this in before v6 feature freeze.

Thanks.

Roberto.

On Sun, 21 Jun 2020 at 12:19, Roberto Fernández Bautista <
roberto.fer.bau@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Jon,
>
> Thanks for the advice. It will still be a while until I have something
> working but yes, I will create a merge request once I have a skeleton for
> the importer.
>
> @Jeff Young - I've made you an editor of the document I made on Pad Stacks
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxBI7_X_I7pO-nuDHPRVlfRBH24XTmwuuN69o_Bqk3s/edit?usp=sharing>.
> Hopefully you will have received a separate email with an editor's link.
> Let me know if that wasn't the case.
>
> Roberto
>
> On Sun, 21 Jun 2020 at 02:51, Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hi Roberto,
>>
>> Welcome!  Thanks for pointing that out about Altium, I learn something
>> new every day!
>>
>> I recommend that you open a merge request for your CADSTAR importer
>> once it is far enough along for people to do some basic tests.  You
>> can mark it as "WIP", but having the MR open early will help get early
>> testing and review so that we can help get it in for V6.
>>
>> Regarding Pad Stacks, @Jeff Young is probably the best person to sync
>> with on the lead dev team as he has recently been doing some of the
>> groundwork.
>>
>> Best,
>> Jon
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 9:07 PM Roberto Fernández Bautista
>> <roberto.fer.bau@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > I'm new to the mailing list. I just wanted to make you aware that I'm
>> starting work on a native Zuken CADSTAR importer for KiCad. I intend to
>> follow a similar approach to @pointhi in the forums for his Altium importer
>> - trying to stick to similar class structure where possible. My "short"
>> term plan is to provide an importer for the CADSTAR PCB archive format
>> (which is an ASCII file that is based on S-expressions). Since I'm doing
>> this in my free time, I expect it will take a few months but hopefully the
>> PCB importer would be ready before KiCad v6 feature freeze. Once I have
>> something that sort of works, I'll make a merge request and ask for further
>> feedback on how to improve it.
>> >
>> > Now, on a second note, I'd like to provide some input on Pad Stacks. I
>> joined the mailing list after the last post on the thread "How do we
>> envision Pad Stacks?" (
>> https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg44006.html), so I can't
>> reply to that thread directly, unfortunately. However, the topic discussed
>> in that thread is very relevant to the work I am trying to do with the
>> CADSTAR importer (and I bet also important for the Altium importer
>> @pointhi  made).
>> >
>> > I'd like to point out two small inaccuracies in Jon's message:
>> >
>> > In Altium you can define a full pad stack when editing footprints:
>> Altium uses a default 14-electrical-layer board stackup which is then
>> mapped to whatever layers you actually use in your design when you include
>> the footprint.
>> > You can define a SMD pad in an inner layer.
>> >
>> > Please see attached screenshots from v20.1 showing above two cases,
>> maybe earlier versions didn't allow this?.  More details can be found here:
>> https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/pcb-prop-padpad-properties-ad
>> .
>> >
>> >
>> > To keep this email short, I've created a document with other bits of
>> information that I feel might be useful (such as how CADSTAR handles Pad
>> Stacks) as well as some suggestions for Pad Stack implementation in KiCad -
>> maybe this could be the start of a more complex design document?
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxBI7_X_I7pO-nuDHPRVlfRBH24XTmwuuN69o_Bqk3s/edit?usp=sharing
>> >
>> > Since this mailing list is public, I have made the above link view only
>> access, but if you'd like to edit, just request it.
>> >
>> > Please let me know what you think.
>> >
>> > Roberto Fernandez (Qbort)
>> >
>> >
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>