Re: gEDA-user: [pcb] overlapping pin/pad -- won't form thermal

[Dave N6NZ <n6nz@xxxxxxxx>]

Ben Jackson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 10:39:22AM -0800, Dave N6NZ wrote:
>> Ben Jackson wrote:
>>> You've always had to draw lines to pads to connect to any
>>> surface polygons.
>> Not being able to create non-round pins that support thermals is a 
>> fundamental brokenness.  Let's fix it.
> 
> Does that apply to pads as well?  If you made "pad thermals" work to surface layers you'd have what you seem to want.
> 

Sure, that's another way to accomplish the particular problem I have 
today.  I can see a number of alternative implementations, so it's worth 
kicking ideas around.

This has caused me to think about my own usage modes.  So far, I've been 
using pcb mostly with surface mount parts, and in retrospect it seems 
quite odd that I've never once missed the ability to thermal an 0603 
bypass cap or what not.  Drawing the line just seemed natural I guess. 
So then I decided to do a through-hole board that would be easy for some 
friends to solder.  And when I carefully made oblong through holes and 
boinked the thermal tool on them, *nothing* *happened*.  This was a 
surprise.

So now I'm pondering the UI psychology of the whole matter as much as 
anything else.  Somehow my brain got wired to think "If it's drilled, it 
ought to thermal."

In any case, I think "easy hand soldering" is something that the 
newbie/casual pcb user is going to value more highly than some of the 
rest of us, so we ought to build in better support for "hand solder pin 
shapes", and make the UI behavior consistent with the principal of least 
surprise.

-dave


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