Copper Pour Ain't Filling

Hi guys,

Nearly completed my very first board with Kicad! :grin:
Was using 5925 on Windows 7 SP1 but it crashes very often especially during placing copper pour.
So, switched to 6097 yesterday. It seems that none of my copper pours works with this 6097 version. The copper pours was filling in 5925 (just that it crashes quite often).
Running the DRC yields no classic copper pour error (copper pour inside copper pour).
Played with clearance & priority (inner copper pour must be higher number priority), but still ainā€™t filling. Itā€™s so weird because it was working in 5925.

No thoughts guys? Possible bug?

Okay, this sounded silly me!
I accidentally press the ā€œdo not show filled areas in zonesā€.

Everything is good with 6097 I guess.

In BZR 5925 it warns you if you try to use the pour tool with ā€œdo not show filled areas in zonesā€ on, not sure if that still happens in 6097.

Hi Tim,

I canā€™t remember whether I have seen that warning in 5925.
Something to think about.

Also, check your net names. I had a GND pour area under a power regulator that wonā€™t pour recently around some thermal vias. It turned out the net name of the footprint and pour were not the same. Simple issue, no DRC errors, but took a while to figure out.

Build BZR 4022: I had finished a board using both ground and copper pours. Just yesterday I was only looking at the layout again and neither copper pour was showing. I just saw these strange outlines that went along the edges and also some outlines in places that would connect isolated clearances around vias and thru-holes. Perhaps I accidentally checked some option but I canā€™t find where the box is in the menu system mentioned above ā€œdo not show filled areas in zonesā€. I do not see it in in Edit Zone and its not in Preferences->General or Preferences->Display. I have uploaded a picture of what the layout looks like with Copper Pours filled (top) and unfilled (bottom). Iā€™ve never seen it look this way before.

BZR 4022???! That is really really old. I strongly encourage you to update, but you may want to read Library management in KiCad version 5 possibly also Converting KiCad version 4 projects to version 5 (Remap a project), and take a backup of your project of course.

But I think there should be a couple of icons on the left toolbar that displays the zone rendering, you may even need to re-fill the zone. I hardly remember how that was done in the days before v4.

Can you run both versions simultaneously or do you have to uninstall version 4 before installing version 5?

Running several KiCad versions on the same Windows machine

I tried installing the new version without removing the old one. The installer warned me that the new install would overwrite the old. So I decided to uninstall the old version so I canā€™t use the old version any more. Luckily, the new version can read some of the old files but I have to create new footprint libraries if I want to modify or create new footprints.

The new version shows copper pours correctly but they seem to be opaque. I used to be able to see through the top layer but I canā€™t any more. I just have to hide and unhide layers to see what is underneath.

You can adjust the opacity of any layer by clicking on the appropriate colour swatch.

Thanks for the info.

Are you familiar with the different ways in which KiCad can show zones?
There are three buttons on the left side of PCB that control this:
image

And these are also acessible via: Pcbnew / View / Drawing Mode / ā€¦