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

["harry eaton" <bumpelo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Thanks Steve, but i know how to place and flip components on the
bottom/far side of my board (its full with SMD there...).
> What i meant with "As PCB lacks this feature" was not components on the
bottom side but putting auxiliary area fills on one of the soldermasks so
that a large
> area is free from soldermask so you can freely solder copper wires on
signal lines, vias etc. there.

You can clear the soldemask from any via by using the "k" key to adjust the
soldermask clearance. You can do this with several vias at once with the
command ":ChangeClearSize(Selected, +30, mils)" too. You must make the
soldermask visible first, otherwise these adjust the copper clearance in
polygons instead of the soldermask.

For the copper "tracks" that you want to clear, simply convert them to
elements and hide ("h" key) the element name, or leave it a null string.
This will have the side-effect that the netlist checking will be very
confused by all the "shorts" to elements not given in the netlist. My
opinion is that if you are soldering a wire to a "track", then that "track"
is in fact an element (i.e. the wire soldered to it is the element that you
are populating on the board). Even so, I think it would be a good idea (and
not very hard) to allow drawing polygon clearances on the solder mask layer.

h.