| ID: | 4278 |
| From: | ge...@igor2.repo.hu |
| Date: | Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:27:49 +0200 (CEST) |
| Subject: | [pcb-rnd] new: "smart" label placement |
Hi all,
this was a low prio feature request by al3x: if you have terminal labels
("pin numbers" in '90s terminology) densely packed, they overlap and it is
not always clear which label goes to which terminal.
We now have a new conf node, appearance/smart_labels (for the time
being you can access it from the preferences dialog config tab or the
conf(set, ...) action or by manually editing your config files). When
enabled, it will try to move away labels that would normally overlap. This
happens on every rendering cycle, considering only the labels currently
visible on screen. This has a few consequences:
- it takes some CPU cycles and memory allocation to make the calculation
so if you have a lot of labels shown, panning/zooming may slow down a bit,
in theory...
- ... and remember, subcircuit labels are labels too, so enabling this
feature does cost a little even if you don't have terminal labels shown
- as you pan/zoom, the situation changes so labels sometimes jump around a
bit - that is normal, intentaional and is not a bug: the algorithm tries
to find a good fit for the current situation and it doesn't remember
previous results
- it also has a priority system: the red subcircuit label print (typically
refdes) has higher prio than terminal labels, so if they overlap, the
terminal label will be moved, not the subc label; but if two subcircuit
labels would overlap, they still can be moved
- labels are normally at a specific point, e.g. the most common case
is subc label which is in the corner of the dashed bbox and terminal
label which is at the center of the terminal (with padstacks, this is
the little cross mark); when a label is moved away, a short line segment
is drawn to indicate where it was moved from. So one label remains in
place, without an extra line, and others are moved out of the way with the
line added.
If you have dense boards with label overlaps happening a lot, please try
to enable this feature and keep testing it for some time before you decide
if it's good or not.
TIA,
Igor2
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