Hello all,
my board house offers different types of boards. They are different at resolution and of course different at price. I’m used to load their DRCs before I start routing a PCB. But if I have to make changes at a later time, I often do not remember which “Custom Rules” I had loaded for that board. The display only shows a number at the “DRC Rules” window.
Is there any chance to make the title of the “Custom Rules” available there? Maybe that function is hided already somewhere.
Thanks
Norbert, DL1EBN
Are you referring to the (version 1) tag which starts a rule set? That should always be set to 1 as it describes the DRC rule language version, not whatever number you wish to assign to it. I’m afraid there isn’t a way to number or names sets of rules.
Hello JamesJ,
yes, it is in the window “Bosrd Setup” and there custom Rules. I don’t mind if it would be shown there or at another place. It’s just a problem if I want to change a PCB after months or years. Normally I do not remember which DRCs I had chosed that time. Therefore I would like to have a indication. Otherwise, like now, I always have to load the DRCs needed again. It ovbviousely doesn’t cause problems if it is loaded several times, but I found it to be useless and uncomfortable.
Regards
Norbert, DL1EBN
Sorry, I didn’t realize the mistakes: I mean “Board Setup” and “had chosen”
Sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re meaning - there is no way to identify sets of DRC rules. Perhaps you could show a screenshot of what you’re referring to?
An obvious answer is that you can use comments in rule files, but it feels too obvious and I wonder if this is what would be enough for you.
# =============================================
# MY OWN RULESET
# =============================================
(version 1)
(rule 'xxx'
(condition "")
(constraint clearance(min 0mm))
)
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The screenshot shows the Board setup screen where I loaded the design rules from my board house.
The second screenshot shows the title of the different resolutions (Design Rules they offer). The difference between those rules is mainly the resolution (distances and drill parameter) an the price (can be 75%more).
So, if I have to update or to make changes at the board, I have to load the board house rules again, because, sometimes after months or years, I do not remember which rules I loaded originally.
For example: If I had a 2-layer simple, KiCAD will show errors if I want to layout less distances between tracks or drills.
If I could check which kind of contrains I had chosen in the original layout, I knew in advance if I have to change the rules or not.
It’s just more comfortable.
Regards
Norbert, DL1EBN
Ah, are you loading the design rules using the “Import Settings from Another Board…” button? If so, there’s no tracking of what settings were loaded from what file I’m afraid. It would be a bit of a pain to track this (and it would be invalid as soon as any changes were made).
regarding the standard board constraints there is this open gitlab issue which proposes to add a simple text description field to the constraints: DRC constraints: add comments-section (#14248) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab
You would be the first to support my feature request 
@JamesJ: O.K. I wonder that this is a problem. If I load/import settings, the import file must come from somewhere. The ipmport file has a name. Just display it. I think there is no need for any trackings, because if I use another file, the info would be there. But anyway, I’m not a programmer.
@mf_ibfeew: I had been using EAGLE for about 20 Years too. Many things were much easier, speacially the transfer and organizing of files that belong to a schematic/PCB and the part libs. But it was far away from all the functions included in KiCAD. I have been using KiCAD for about 5 years now. Once I got used to it, I like it. It is another software with much more functions. But sometimes I miss the self explaining way of EAGLE.
Regards
Norbert, DL1EBN
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