Re: gEDA-user: PCB soldermask cutouts on solder side

[Xtian Xultz <xultz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Em Dom 13 Nov 2005 18:20, Michael Schewe escreveu:
> I have my first board in PCB (20050315 Xaw) nearly ready for production and
> want to have a (polygon) area where thick tracks are routed to be free of
> soldermask. I want to hand-solder solid copper wires there so that the
> board can handle large currents. The component pads are not sufficient for
> that. I have not seen a feature in PCB yet where i can draw lines or
> polygons on the soldermask. Is this possible ?

AFAIK, not, and its a must have for PCB, but unfortunatelly nobody dids it and 
I dont have the sufficient IQ to do it...

> Or can a free signal layer 
> be grouped with the soldermask so that this contens is added to the
> soldermask output when writing gerber files ?

AFAIK, no, too.

What I do:
If you olny need a simple rectangule or a square, you can create a component 
with only one pad, with the size you need, convert it to component, made him 
with square corners (q key) and place in your board.
You can make it for a complete line, but by default pcb dont make 45 degrees 
pads, by editing some lines on pcb source code it is possible to do it, but 
it causes other problems, so I never tried it.
When I need to clear a complete line (sometimes I need it too) I dont do it on 
pcb, I convert the .ps output to sketch file (using pstoedit -f sk), and edit 
it on sketch (today sketch are named skencil) and use the .ps output of 
sketch to made my boards. Some printed circuit vendors dont accept .ps files, 
so you must check with yours.