My boardhouse requires a copper pcb edge clearance of at least 0.25mm for outer layers and 0.4mm for inner layers. The problem is the copper filled zones. They must have a clearance of max. 0.2mm and as a result, the copper pcb edge clearance will be too small.
One solution could be to draw the copper filled zones 0.4mm within the pcb edge.
That’s ok for simple rectangular shaped boards but in my case I have a board with a complex shape which makes it practically impossible to do that. At least it will be very time consuming.
In other EDA software there’s a separate copper pcb edge clearance setting but I can’t find it in KiCad.
My question is, how do I solve this without making compromises in the clearance settings?
In the unstable development version 5.99 there’s a project wide board setting for edge clearance, but not for each layer. Layers are handled by textual design rules, see Need some guinea pigs for a rule-based DRC <<PROTOTYPE>>.
If you really need different clearance for different layers I think you are out of luck with v5.1. But if 0.4mm for all is enough it has a workaround: set the width of the edge.cut lines. The actual board edge is always in the middle of the line (as is a convention in the industry) but KiCad takes the outer edge of the line to consideration when calculating the clearance. Some manufacturers don’t like thick outlines and especially if they aren’t all of the same thickness, but most would accept it anyways.
Like it is in Eagle. That’s exactly what I was looking for.
So, this setting is not present in v5.1.x but it will be present in v6.x.x.
No need to file a bug report of feature request then.
you have to work within the limitations of the tool. 5.1.x doesn’t have the required constrains (either global board edge or textual constraints).
building it piecewise might be the only solution.
It also depends on how complex… if it includes lots of curves or other fancy cutouts (think xmas tree PCB’s) then yes … if it is just 90,45deg edges well… its not that bad, not that cumbersome.
its doable, just not as easy
This is what I did recently… its more an internal clearance rather than edge-cut clearance but the argument is the same.
In such cases I used it more as a failsafe boundary rather than fill upto and then drew the shapes via other means. v5.99 should make this easier and I keep meaning to wipe this board and play with the contraints
