Mail Archives: geda-user/2012/03/01/01:05:48
On 02/29/2012 01:29 AM, Russell Dill wrote:
>> (2) I am laying out a board where the layout is very tight. There is no
>> room for REFDESes. However, I will need the REFDESes in the printout of the
>> layout because the board will assembled by hand. I would like a way to turn
>> the REFDESes on the PBC selectively on and off, so when I print the gerbers
>> to send to fab house, the REFDESes which take too much space will not show
>> up, but I can still turn on the REFDESes at a later time, when I print the
>> layout at some magnification. The silkscreen contains some items I would
>> like printed on the actual PCB, so it is not an issue of turning the
>> silkscreen on and off. I manipulated the PCB with vim, turning all REFDES
>> sizes to zero. Unfortunately, PCB printed little blobs on the silkscreen
>> then. Any ideas?
> What you want is an assembly drawing.
Yes, you nailed it!
> PCB has some support for this,
> just not the features you want. There is a pretty good example here:
>
> http://blogs.mentor.com/tom-hausherr/blog/2011/05/04/pcb-design-perfection-starts-in-the-cad-library-part-16/
Thank you!
>
> Modifying PCB to support that would be pretty easy. The first step
> would be would be always printing the refdes in the center of the
> part. The second would be specifying some flag for certain pads not to
> print so that they don't obscure the refdes, this could be automatic.
> And the third would be to add an optional outline layer for
> footprints. If the layer is there, it uses that, otherwise it uses the
> silk.
I would like to suggest this as a future feature, along with
buried/blind vias. If, in PCB, there were a way to copy the component
and solder layers each to a different layer, then both of the new layers
could become the assembly drawing. For now, if I could move the
refdes'es to another layer, that, too, would do it. I would move the
troublesome refdes'es to other layers and just not submit the gerbers
for these layers. To come up with an assembly schematic, I could print
(or export) these layers along with the component and solder layers at
the appropriate magnification.
- Raw text -