Re: gEDA-user: Removing soldermask over traces/polygons in PCB?

[Xtian Xultz <xultz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Em Qua 19 Jan 2005 15:03, Steve Meier escreveu:
> Do you really want bare copper or would bare copper with the surface
> finish be ok? If so create one or more "devices", with land patterns, to
> represent the exposed contacts. Then place these phony devices on the
> board. I like to put them in the schematic, perhaps connected to a
> ground plane, as well.

Well, there is a problem because I cant make device with land pattern in the 
diagonal orientation, so the line must be made with horizontal or vertical 
lines only. And there is a problem, because that kind of lines is to conduct 
high levels of currents, and using only 90 degrees curves makes the 
inductance be indreased, and of course the line becomes longer. And its a 
boring process, because I must represent every piece of land pattern in the 
schematic (because of the netlist) and must create every piece too. Its not a 
solution.

I made a suggestion on the pcb site, without answer, I dont know how difficult 
is it to implement, to made a way to edit the solder mask with lines and 
poligons, using some boolean operations. Like, enabling the show of the 
soldermask, when selecting the line command, the line will erase the 
soldermask where I draw it. To make it perfect, the soldermask must be drawn 
with transparency, these function is in the PCB configuration file for the 
layers.

>
> Steve Meier
>
> On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 03:26, Xtian Xultz wrote:
> > Em Qua 19 Jan 2005 01:13, Randall Nortman escreveu:
> > > I would like to create areas of bare copper, with no soldermask.  In
> > > particular, I'd like to create grounded guard bands around the edges
> > > of my board to protect against ESD during handling of the board.  To
> > > see what I'm trying to do, have a look at the last two slides of:
> > >
> > >   http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~benedict/pcbpres.pdf
> > >
> > > As far as I can tell, only pads seem to clear the soldermask.  Is it
> > > possible to get PCB to clear the soldermask over a trace or polygon?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Randall Nortman
> >
> > AFAIK, no. I sometimes do it to increase the current capability of a
> > trace. To do it, I use the postscript output, convert it to .sk with
> > pstoedit and opens it with sketch, and there I edit the way I want (and
> > place some logos, figures, and stuff). And then export to .ps and send to
> > my fab.