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Re: gEDA-user: New user to PCB - what does this error mean?
Susan,
Great example files!
I believe that you are the First person ever that has made the
decision to have only one copper layer in your stackup.
Usually, when I do a one layer board, it's a two layer design and
just don't use the second side.
What might be causing a issue for understanding, is the pcb has no
clue about the physical stackup, it cares about the X-Y of your
design, so when you have a board fabricated you supply the board house
with the gerber plots of the layers you want, thats when a real
decision about the layers of your board comes into play.
When the board house i use for prototypes makes a one layer board it
is usually a two layer board that they remove all the copper on the
back side, so the cost for 1 and 2 layer boards are the same. This is
because they panelize it with other boards they are making that day,
that are more than likely 2 layers.
Looking at Express PCB they only have 2 and 4 layer designs, and when
I used them in the past I got bad boards, I had to solder all the vias
(100+) to make an intern's design work, I was not happy and will never
use them again, and always scare peeps away :-P
Now to workaround your problem.
If you add an additional copper layer and set it as the solder side
you can continue your work.
That is, add a new layer, then name it something like "DO NOT USE" or
"jumpers" ( named for you, it's not special to pcb )
Assign it to solder side, then it will workaround both problems.
Note.... I had to add the layer, quit preferences, reopen preferences,
then assign the layer to it's group ( another bug :-P )
maybe the gang can clean up the minimum of two copper layers inside of
the code, but I suspect that it would require some data structure
rewrites. This would probably get rolled into the dream of arbitrary
layers.
Hardkrash
On Jan 9, 2009, at 6:39 PM, Susan Mackay wrote:
> Thanks for the replies.
>
> I'm using version 20081128. The following is the "about" text:
>
>
> This is PCB, an interactive
> printed circuit board editor
> version 20081128
>
> Compiled on Jan 7 2009 at 13:24:12
>
> by harry eaton
>
> Copyright (C) Thomas Nau 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997
> Copyright (C) harry eaton 1998-2007
> Copyright (C) C. Scott Ananian 2001
> Copyright (C) DJ Delorie 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
> Copyright (C) Dan McMahill 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
>
> It is licensed under the terms of the GNU
> General Public License version 2
> See the LICENSE file for more information
>
> For more information see:
>
> PCB homepage: http://pcb.sf.net
> gEDA homepage: http://www.geda.seul.org
> gEDA Wiki: http://geda.seul.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=geda
>
> ----- Compile Time Options -----
> GUI:
> gtk : Gtk - The Gimp Toolkit
> Exporters:
> bom : Exports a Bill of Materials
> gerber : RS-274X (Gerber) export.
> nelma : Numerical analysis package export.
> png : GIF/JPEG/PNG export.
> ps : Postscript export.
> eps : Encapsulated Postscript
> Printers:
> lpr : Postscript print.
>
>
> Thanks for the reference to the tutorial. It is not one of the ones
> that I had looked at. However, a very quick glance at the 3 example
> "first board"s shows that none of them fit what I'm currently trying
> to do which is a singe sided board with the copper on the top for
> SMD components. The examples seem to show a single sided board with
> the copper on the bottom, a double-sided board and the final example
> with SMD devices but in a 4-layer board. I guess I'd better actually
> read it and then comment!!!!
>
> I've attached a .zip file with 2 boards in it. "Board2.pcb" can use
> used to demonstrate 2 of the problems. If you select the 'component'
> layer and the 'rect' tool and draw a rectangle around the
> components, you can see that the rectangle seems to be full and does
> not make any holes around the pads. if you close it and open it
> again (just so any issues are separated) and then select the 'rat
> lines' layer and select the 'line' tool, you can move the pencil and
> cross-hairs around until you click on a pad - at that point you get
> the error mentioned in the OP and one of the CPUs becomes fully
> loaded.
>
> The other board "board1LayerWithRats.pcb" demonstrates the other
> problem. Simply open the file and click on the 'o' key and the CPU
> will go 100% with the GUI being unresponsive.
>
> Thanks for the assistance. I really think I'll need to use something
> like PCB for what I'm ultimately trying to do. At this stage I'm
> using some prototyping boards for both learning about PCB and for
> validating my design. At least the last part is still progressing as
> I was able to download the 'ExpressPCB' windows software, recreate
> the schematic and create the PC board I was trying to do with PCB in
> about 3 hours (as opposed to about 4 days with gEDA software - very
> steep learning curve!!! and slow learner!)
>
> Susan
>
> <PCBoards.zip>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> geda-user mailing list
> geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
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