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Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2015 19:23:41 -0500
Message-ID: <CAM2RGhTzA2_JVJAfAg-7wanE-nSah2B9p-bGwrstfK_8DrCmFA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [geda-user] FOSDEM
From: Evan Foss <evanfoss AT gmail DOT com>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
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Precedence: bulk

DJ while those are all really good ideas my impression of the PCB
source is that it would take a lot of work to implement. I want to see
that blue sky doc but in the meanwhile things like copper arcs in
footprints and keep out zones for solder mask would really help out
more. I am pretty sure I am not the best programmer here but to me it
makes the most sense to fix the more basic limitations and then figure
out how to do what you are suggesting.

Understand your frustrations about not getting traction on improving
PCB but I looked at the source for it and gschem a while back.
gschem's source was clear to me, PCB was not. I can not tell if that
is because of my limitations or if it is because PCB is messy. I would
like to help you but I am kind of invested in writing a library to
read bsdl files.

It would be nice to have a draft of what the future PCB file format
would look like building off of what we have now instead of
reinventing the wheel.

I do not mean to be so critical of the people who have put a lot of
hard work into PCB. I still prefer it over say orcad.



On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 5:46 PM, DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
>
> I keep thinking about pcb's file (and thus data) format.  I have lots
> of ideas but no traction :-(
>
> Some ideas:
>
> Elements should be able to reference a common footprint or copy it to
> make a private footprint (sketchup does this a LOT).  I.e. all DIP16
> elements should share a common footprint, and editing one should edit
> them all.  Note we have the "inhereted attributes" problem all over
> again, like gschem - the footprint provides a default refdes location
> but nearly every element changes it, but that shouldn't mean needing a
> private footprint definition for each element.
>
> Likewise, footprints should reference a common set of padstacks,
> rather than have N independent but identical padstacks.  There should
> be a way of overriding part of a padstack without having a private
> copy of it?
>
> These "common" definitions should be somewhat independent of the layer
> stackup (i.e. symbolic layer types) and map to the specific layer
> stackup somehow.  This lets developers change the stackup without
> worrying about the footprints, and maybe opens the way to flex cables
> where different regions have different stackups.
>
> PCB should have a concept of a "sublayout" (i.e. four identical input
> channels).  Sublayouts should be movable, rotatable, go on either
> board size, yet if you edit a common one, they all change.  Sublayouts
> should somehow relate to heirarchical schematics, including some rules
> about how to name/rename parts within.
>
> Footprints should be a sublayout :-)
>
> /me starts another blue sky document...



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