kicad-lib-committers team mailing list archive

[Bernd Wiebus <bernd.wiebus@xxxxxx>]

Hello Pawel.

Am Montag, den 02.06.2014, 09:57 +0200 schrieb Paweł Dras:

> With pads over the silk is the same situation, in many cases after
> silk erasure by solder mask it don't looks good on final product.

It is not only about "looking good". Silkscreen print over Pads is
nasty, if someone forgets to distract the pads from the silkscreen.
It may be expensiv, but shure will cost time at last.....

If you place your silksceen across pads, and erase it over the pads,
your silkscreen will be chopped. so better you chopp it by yourself and
make it looking good.


> Another problem is to wide placed silk.

Think about, that you perhaps need place for rework tools.
And wave soldering needs more space around the devices than reflow.

Some years ago, KiCad insisted in thik lines, because you could not
change the wide of silk screen lines. Of course, it was possible by
editing the library file by hand.

But this thick lines are sometimes needed, because a manufacturer who
use a real silk-screen printing process and not a optical process, meeds
the wide lines.

So bee careful, if you use thin lines. Think about the spacing.

> I have a question, can be ref and value placed as in my attachment or
> should  be above and below resistor?

It is a bad idea, to place text under devices, because it cannot be read
anymore, if the device is once mounted......so i put text to this
positions, only if there is nowhere a better place for the text.

Personally, i switch the value at layouts and silkscreens to invisible,
and keep only reference as a designator.

Having reference AND value at the layout costs place and is terrible to
read. So better i use only the reference, and the BOM of course. ;O)

For big boards with few devices, it migt be ok to have both, but for
growing sisze, it will get diffcult to read.

the exeption is, if you use the silk-screen not as an silk-screen at the
board, but as an assembly layer. So you are not stuck to board
dimensions, but can make DIN A2 prints for boards the size of a small
stamp. ;O)

With best regards: Bernd Wiebus alias dl1eic