We have developed an external plugin for KiCad’s PCB design software, enabling users to create custom rules for clearances between net classes through a user-friendly and practical matrix-based GUI.
The plugin is named Net Class Clearance Matrix (NCCM) and is available on our GitHub profile, the exact repository linked here. The installation instructions and user guides can also be found on the repository page.
NCCM was written using wxPython and the new KiCad IPC API. At present, it can only be installed manually due to complications with installing IPC plugins through KiCad’s internal Plugin and Content Manager.
Please feel free to ask any questions; we would be more than happy to provide answers and support to those who are interested, and feedback on your experience would be greatly appreciated as well.
Gitlab is having some issue preventing me from logging in so I’ll respond here.
Looks like your packaging script is not copying everything. Check how your plugins file and directory structure looks like when you install manually and compare with what PCM extracts into it’s plugins directory (a button in PCM will open correct dir for you), it should be exactly the same.
Most likely you forgot to copy plugin.json, it should not be next to metadata.json in pcm archive, it should be inside plugins subdirectory, same as everything else you expect to be extracted.
Indeed you were right that the installed directory should emulate the plugins directory. So by copying both the plugin.json and requirements.txt it works now! Thank you for your assistance. We’ve now submitted it to the PCM metadata repo so it should be available through KiCad soon.
Very nice!
Personally I prefer the method that KiCAD introduced, especially for HV stuff and the quirks in realizing the constrain BUT I do appreciate people prefer a simple gui and a more classical matrix
