| ID: | 4806 |
| From: | rn...@igor2.repo.hu |
| Date: | Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:01:28 +0200 (CEST) |
| Subject: | [pcb-rnd] new: lihata v8, route style upgrade (major via change!) + HEAD stability |
| replies: | 4808 from rn...@igor2.repo.hu |
Hi all, I've finished the initial round of route style upgrades. The main news are: 1. svn HEAD stability: I think we are sort of stable now; I would call svn HEAD experimantal. Please do test it, especially the new features, the sooner the better, but please watch out, as we may still have bugs and sharp corners! (Which is okat as we are still early in the cleanup phase, far away from the next release) 2. we have lihata v8 as default file format now. It has a few minor changes plus the big one: route style has padstack prototype instead if two diameters for the via geometry 3. every part of the code, except for two remote corners (see later) switched over to use route style (and "pen") via padstack prototype instead of the old two diameters 4. I have upgraded the default boards to v8 The big change is how we specify a via on the UI. You may be aware of the fact that for years we have padstacks. Our vias are also padstacks for years. There's no special via object in pcb-rnd, what you place as a via is just a padstack, with no terminal ID, placed on the board. That means your via can be anything a padstack can represent. We still had a little file format and UI limitation around this, tho: in the routing style and in the "pen", the way you specified a via was "ring radius and hole radius". This affected the most trivial ways of via creation (via tool, switching layer group while drawing a series of lines, line-of-vias) to use the simplest via geometry. The new approach is a fix for this in the UI and in the file format: instead of two diameters, a via is simple represented by its padstack prototype ID. Then you can create any via geometry you want, using the usual methods, most notably the "generate common geometry" tab of the padstack proto editor dialog. Creating the good old simple geometry is only a few clicks more. Considering how often you need to specify via geometry for routing styles, I find these few extra clicks justified. You may ask "but what's the benefit?". There are a number of common, useful cases which are easy to do when you can use any prototype for placing vias: - you can decide about mask size - you can choose to have a different (usually smaller) via ring on internal copper layers - since we support per layer type clearance, you can optionally have different clearance e.g. for internal layers - you can choose to use a different shape of via, e.g. octagon; for real small rings and octilinear routing, the octagon can slightly increase copper surface without taking away routing space; this may matter if small rings tend to peal off - in case you are hand drawing a footprint with a few diffrent, randomly repeating padstacks: it may be convenient to design the padstacks first, then assign the most used ones to route styles and then place your terminals as "vias" first (then assign terminal ID). Note: a padstack doesn't necessarily have a hole, that's how we use padstacks for smd pads; the route style or pen code won't try to enforce you to have a hole in your via. Known bugs/limitations/TODOs: - the old autorouter code is not yet upgraded, will happen in the next few days - don't yet use it - the vendor drill plugin is not yet upgraded, will also happen in the next few days - don't yet use it - known bug: right after creating a new via padstack prototype for a routing style, you need to re-select the routing sytem before the pen is updated - will be fixed soon - tutorials... I am planning to make a video on this; will take some days to get it recorded, narrated, edited, etc. Best regards, Igor2
Reply subtree:
4806 [pcb-rnd] new: lihata v8, route style upgrade (major via change!) + HEAD stability from rn...@igor2.repo.hu
4808 Re: [pcb-rnd] new: lihata v8, route style upgrade (major via change!) from rn...@igor2.repo.hu