gEDA-user: Trick to add sick text to PCB

[Jason Aron <jaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

First, I'd like to thank the developers of PCB and gEDA.  These tools are VERY nice, and I'm glad someone has made this software for linux.  Thanks for the work and all of the support.  
 
If anyone is interested, here is a little trick to add some text in the silkscreen of your PCB layout.  The text can say anything you want and can be any size.  The trick is: in both your schematic and layout, add a component which has no pins and doesn't connect to anything.  The text should be contained in the RefDes of the footprint and will be included as silkscreen on the layout.  
I've got a design on sourceforge that's a good demonstration of this.  The design is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wireless-usb
 
The schematic symbol should be called "text.sym" and contain:
v 20061020 1
T 1700 2100 8 10 1 1 0 6 1
refdes=TEXT-HERE
T 300 2100 9 10 1 0 0 0 1
silkscreen_text
T 300 2100 5 10 0 0 0 0 1
footprint=text_footprint
 
The footprint file should be called "text_footprint" and contain:
Element[0x0 "text" "" "" 0 0 -5830 -9846 0 110 0x0]
(
ElementLine[25600 9450 -25600 9450 800]
)

Of course there are hundreds of ways to modify this code and get the same result... 
I am using an old version of PCB from the debian database, so this function may have been included in newer releases.  I've noticed in the lists, that a number of good functions have been added since debian grabbed their version.  
 
Hope people find this useful.
Jason

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