Re: gEDA-user: PCB: ground network common practice newbie question

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 11:48:54AM -0400, Stuart Brorson wrote:
> >   Another quesion. If you draw big polygons to fill any empty space
> > with ground copper on the the board, how do you deal with the pieces
> > of copper that are not connected (debris?)? For example, those in
> > between lines.
> 
> It depends upon what you want to do.  If they are large areas, why not
> stick a few vias in them and connect them to GND?  Otherwise, just
> delete them.  (Are you saying PCB won't delete the fragments without
> deleting the whole poly?  If so, that's kind of a bug. . . . . .)

islands are not removed.  Right now, a gerber polygon is drawn and then 
sections removed for the clearances.  To remove islands, it seems that
you'd either need to figure out how to draw (automatically) a polygon around
each island that removes the copper, or you'd need to maybe do the copper
fill by using line segments.  The other task is how to determine that
an island is in fact an island.  I just am not familiar enough with all
the details of the connection scanning code to comment on what more it
would take (if any?) to get that done.

-Dan

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