Re: gEDA-user: PCB paste layer, revisited.

[Dave N6NZ <n6nz@xxxxxxxx>]

DJ Delorie wrote:
> The paste layer is built from the pad layer directly, yes.  I use the
> ps-bloat setting to offset my paste holes, 

Please explain this ps-bloat setting, sounds useful.

> Search the archivies for "multipad" or "multi-pad". 
OK, I will look that up, it sounds related.  But there is a reason I 
thought that paste should be detached from pads, and that is that for 
some cases you may not have 1:1 correspondence between pad and paste 
shapes.  For instance, consider voltage regulator and RF PA transistors 
that have a whopping big ground pad that is designed to attach to a 
large pad that joins the ground plane and uses all the board's ground 
plane copper as a heat sink.  For this case, The natural way to specify 
this is one large pad on the pad layer, and on the paste layer a matrix 
grid of solder pasted dots to distribute solder over the pad.  My scheme 
is designed to handle this case naturally. (I think for any "large area" 
application of solder paste, a grid will work better in practice than 
one large hole in the stencil, for Mother Nature reasons.)

I'm not saying the multi-pad idea doesn't have merit for other reasons, 
but I don't think it solves the paste problem completely.

> 
> The other thing I've talked about is adding true paste and anti-paste
> layers, 

I'm advocating for a true paste layer. What's an anti-paste layer? Do I 
want one of those, too?

-dave


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