Re: gEDA-user: Newby experiences with the pcb layout tool

[Ben Jackson <ben@xxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 12:05:17PM +0200, Juergen Harms wrote:
> 
> 2. Usage notes, stability
> 
> Problems:
> - I had quite frequent problems adding points to a polygon - but no 
> serious problem, saving and re-starting pcb always helped

It would help to know if you were using thin-drawn polygons or not and
a set of steps you used to try to add a point.

> - There is no way to have non-copper holes (even adding 0x08 to the 
> flags does not help) - forget it

The "hole" flag should work.  However be aware that most fabs charge
extra if you mix plated and non-plated holes because it's an additional
drilling step.

> - Silkscreen text: this is the only problem I really regret. The text 
> generated is so fat and clumsy, that it becomes more or less unreadable 
> in small fonts. On the quit small pcb I made, I ended up refraining from 
> using text.

The silk is pretty ugly.  I also keep meaning to make a logo-to-silk
converter...

> - Be able to export directly to Gerber 

Do you mean automatically invoke a gerber viewer after generating the
files?

> - Avoid getting non-significant warning messages when you do a Design 
> Rule Check (as it happens with mount-holes, where you get 2 messages 
> each that the ring is too small). How about adding a flag to the element 
> description that makes DRC skip the check of that element? would be a 
> somewhat general solution.

DRC needs a lot of help.  It's actually okay if you are already near
perfect and just need DRC to point out the remaining issues.  But if you
run it early you get lots of spurious warnings, and if you've accumulated
a lot of problems (either real or due to DRC quirks like confusing min
annulus and min copper) then it's hard to get a foothold on the result.

> through to the ultimate test of sending the .gwk file to the layout 
> manufacturer.

Lots of people on the list have, to many different board houses.

-- 
Ben Jackson AD7GD
<ben@xxxxxxx>
http://www.ben.com/


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