X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Message-ID: <1436477539.1747.21.camel@ssalewski.de> Subject: [geda-user] What is the hardest part in a PCB layout program? From: Stefan Salewski To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2015 23:32:19 +0200 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.12.11 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com I have to admit that I do not know much about internals of a PCB layout program. About 7 years ago I had a short look into the PCB code -- I think I was very positive surprised that code size was not too big, but of course I did not understand much. For a long time it was my impression that gerber export is very hard. But about one year ago I had a short discussion with someone working on some gerber stuff, and he said that for polygons, circular arcs and straight lines gerber export is not that difficult. (I think he was talking about constructing arbitrary curves in KiCad by line segments. Can not really remember.) I think long time ago I read something about polygon slicer on this list -- can not find it currently with google. I had a look into wikipedia about gerber274X recently. My impression was that we had positive and negative shapes for polygons, arcs and line segments, which we can draw in arbitrary order. So my current impression is that gerber export maybe is not that hard. Maybe it was with old gerber274D ? Next difficult point is of course real time DRC, but that is basically geometric intersection check. For elliptical arcs segments it may be difficult I guess? And no, I do not plan one more layout tool currently... But while so many smart people are still on this list, it may be a good time to ask.