Board Setup Data Fab Output

[aaron]

A follow on to this discussion:

Cannot start traces on Castellated holes

This, right? [image] I have a bunch of pins in the same footprint, but doing this just for one did not work. Does it have a property for the whole footprint?

Maybe @craftyjon can shed light, does the Copper finish and other setup data end up in a Fab output anywhere? Or is this only for reference in side the Kicad project. I don’t see it anywhere in the gerber X2 data comments.

Is it possible to reference these fields via variable in Pcbnew? For instance, I generally have a fabrication notes block on the User.Comments layer that is printed to PDF as a README in the fab package. This would allow that block to be driven from the Board Settings, similar (really exactly) like the Title block is from Page Settings.

[craftyjon]

@aaron

does the Copper finish and other setup data end up in a Fab output anywhere?

Yes, in the Gerber job file if you generate one.

@aaron

Is it possible to reference these fields via variable in Pcbnew?

No, however it’s included in the board characteristics table object that can be placed on the drawing canvas.

[leoheck]

@craftyjon

No, however it’s included in the board stackup table object that can be placed on the drawing canvas.

@craftyjon How can I do that?

[craftyjon]

Place > Board Characteristics

[leoheck]

Place > Add Board Characteristics, nice.
This is pretty nice!

[leoheck]

Does it not update when values change? No, right?
Then I have to delete and add it back?

[leoheck]

This is the generated layer stackup. Pretty nice.
I did not know that Kicad 6 has these things.

I was creating this one. It actually works, I was just working to make a Kicad package.
It also has this layers art showing the proportional thickness of the layers.

[aaron]

@craftyjon

Yes, in the Gerber job file if you generate one.

@aaron

Is it possible to reference these fields via variable in Pcbnew?

No, however it’s included in the board characteristics table object that can be placed on the drawing canvas.

Thanks @craftyjon! I have no idea how I missed this in the v6 release. This is greatly simplifies things! Does anyone know of any board houses that actually use the extra X2 data yet? I have only seen one, and they don’t ship to the US.

[eelik]

@leoheck

Does it not update when values change? No, right?
Then I have to delete and add it back?

No, right, yes. It’s implemented as just a group of text and graphic objects. Updating on-the-fly would be complex: every value which is used here should have a signal which this group listens to. If these values already have signals it might be worth adding listeners, but I doubt they have. Not impossible, but IMO it wouldn’t pay back. A compromise solution could be to add an “update” function to the table. With the current implementation this would require handling the group names as special cases.

[paulvdh]

@eelik

A compromise solution could be to …

For me it sounds kind of logical to trigger an update of this table when zone boundaries are re-calculated. The extra time this needs is probably negligible.

[eelik]

This would be a nice trick, but unreliable. Not all boards even have zones. Most do, but nobody guarantees zones are updated after some board properties are changed.

The solution should work for all tables (two at the moment).

[paulvdh]

@eelik

Not all boards even have zones.

Didn’t think of that.
Maybe change: Check zone fills before plotting into: Check zone fills and data tables before plotting, or add an extra checkbox there.

But the Print dialog does not have the zone fill either:

[leoheck]

@eelik

It’s implemented as just a group of text and graphic objects

I was implementing it as a generated footprint, instantiated inside the document only, and if I click the button again, It would update the existing footprint (in my case, it would replace the whole footprint instead of replacing the field values) just keeping the original placement if this generated footprint was already instantiated before.

Kicad could do something similar.