DRC "Two track ends to close" ErrType(17)

Same with me.

(lelek (not eelik)) probably won’t mind we hiyacked his 2 year old thread.

Edit:
I was utterly confused at first and therefore did some more testing, and found that the 2 errors are clear violations of your design rules.
The +Load net has a clearance of around 1.26mm, with a track of the “U11_Pin1” net below it, while according to the design rules it should should have a clearance of 1.524mm If you change the design rules to a clearance of, for example 1mm, the DRC errors go away.
When you draw the track of the +Load net, the interactive router seems to partially ignore the DRC settings, but that is another subject.

Below this line is mostly nonsence.

I deleted the offending track segment, and the segments on the left and right, and then re-connected the left and right tracks again.
After that I re-ran DRC and the error re-appeared.
I can not see anything that would warrant this DRC error. It is a very simple continuous track and this should not generates DRC errors.
Both “Two track ends too close” DRC errors can only be between track segments of the same net.
I even dragged the 45 degree part a bit to the sides to make sure nothing else can cause the DRC error.
It seems to be a bug in KiCad and it may be worth filing a bug report about this.

Even weirder:
If I delete the tracks from the “U11_pin1” net, (hover above it and press [Del], then both DRC errors dissapear, while If I only delete the closest segment of the “U11_pin1” net and run DRC, then the Top error dissapears, while the bottom error remains, while that net is below of +Load net.
image

Another note:
You should not ignore the “Drilled holes too close together” DRC errors. These are (both) very serious error and usually result in blunt refusal when you try to have your boards manufactured, and rightly so. The reason behind it is that if holes overlap then the drill breaks when drilling the 2nd hole because it bends to the side, and the Carbide drills used for PCB manufacture are very fragile and break easily (almost certainly) with side loads.

I do not know whether you’re crasy or not, but I see no correlation between this DRC error and you being crasy or not.

Paulvdh…You’ve done it again. Thanks a lot.

I had some difficulty to fine-drag the +Load trace. This gets back to the other (maybe it should be a bug?) that even with a fine grid the trace jumps too far when dragging; difficult to fine-tweak the position. But as I have encountered previously, it seems like switching back and forth between 45 degree and free angle drag modes, eventually I can approach what I want. Now those DRCs are gone.

I don’t think we are hijacking the topic (??). I see what claims to be the same DRC violation…doesn’t it make more sense than putting what sounds like the same topic into a new thread? If it does not, please let me know. I do not know why we close some threads after 6 months, unless software version changes render them irrelevant.

And potato leek soup can be excellent.

I was mistified a bit by your wide clearance, untill I saw the text:

Maximum: 250V 1A 100W

You can also make the clearances visible. This is quite common in PCB programs, but not often used because it adds even more clutter to the board.
In KiCad V5.1 you can enable it with:

Pcbnew / Preferences / Preferences… / Pcbnew / Display Options / Clearance Outlines / Track Clearance / (*) Show always.

Phew, that’s 9 layer deep (but I exaggerated a bit).
If you enable this, the DRC errors become obvious immediately:
image

1 Like

That works…at least I can toggle it on and off if needed. Thanks again.

Thanks for the explanation. Maybe next time I will remember that turning on the visibility of clearances is an obvious thing to do.

If the router happily lets you create tracks which are against DRC it should be handled as a bug. Could you @BobZ file a bug report about this?

I just did a simple test, and re-loaded the BobZ’s original upload, then:

1). Click on the 45 degree segment and delete it.
2). Click on “auto track width” icon to enable it.
3). Re-draw the 45 degree segment on the same location.
4). DRC check, and it flags the same errors.

After that I removed the inner 4 fat segments ob Bob’s design, and re-drew it from left to right. There are now 3 “Track ends too close” and one “Track too close to pad” DRC errors.

On other attepts the Interactive router pushed the other things aside and layed the track witout DRC errors, as I have come to expect from KiCad, but this time it did draw tracks with violation to DRC and it looks like a bug.

Some time ago I was updating a PCB from a minimum track widht of 0.25mm to 0.3mm, which caused about 200 DRC errors.
Once those errors were created I had trouble with dragging the tracks apart to conform again to the DRC rules.

Hi, eelik and paulvdh:

Thanks for looking into this.

Yes OK the consensus is that this is a bug, so here we go…


I have filed bugs previously however I am now at Launchpad.net. Looking at the page (see image) I cannot now see how to file a new bug…??

There’s “Report a bug” link in the right upper corner of the main page https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad.

1 Like

Thanks, Eelik

I have read that but please look at the image which I sent. I do not see that link anywhere. I think I need a screen shot showing me where this link is.

As you wish (This is what i see when clicking the link provided by @eelik, I marked the report a bug button with a pink rectangle)

Hi, Rene

Sorry I typed too soon. I see it now. But…if you go to " How can I help improve KiCad?"

I am attempting to follow these instructions.

  1. The bug tracker will check to see if there are similar bugs based on the summary. If one of them looks like yours, then follow step 3 above.
  2. If not, click “No, I need to report a new bug”
  3. In the “Further information” text box, please describe the steps to recreate the bug. If the bug is subtle, please describe both the expected behavior as well as the actual behavior.

That does not tell me to go back to the main page. It tells me to click on the upper right after searching for bug already existing. That is what I did.

Hi BobZ-

I’m sorry that Launchpad is confusing. You are definitely not the first person to run into issues with it! I appreciate your keeping at it to help out with the report.

The screenshot you posted looks like you are at https://bugs.launchpad.net . This is the main Launchpad site. To report a new KiCad bug, you’ll need to navigate to https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad (Note the extra ‘kicad’ at the end).

1 Like

Thanks, Seth_h.

I am thinking that (what would appear to be) an easy way to solve my immediate issue would be a revision of the instructions at “How to report a bug”. I realize now that my initial bug search came up empty, and that resulting page is probably different from finding possible matches. That is the situation which is addressed in the instructions.

Also recently I have come to rely almost exclusively on this forum. If I had looked at “Help>about” it provides the link to report a bug, aside from searching first. But I am sympathetic to the idea of searching before originating a new bug.

Searching first helps but only if you experiment around with the search term. If you only enter your planned bug title then you can skip that step as the same test is done automatically anyways as part of the bug report step.

This all goes to prove “caveat empty.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caveat_emptor

Thanks Rene. Actually I have learned that the search within this forum seems to work surprisingly well. Usually not much need to play with the search terms. So I was expecting similar from the bug search. Anyway it is useful to keep in mind that the page for reporting a bug covers the search also. My question is whether the " How can I help improve KiCad?" page on this forum should be revised?

The search on launchpad works quite well. The problem is that reporters do not always use the best possible title nor description (and there are fewer guys around that fix titles afterwards)

I tend to search for single key words at launchpad and then manually go through the results to see if anything can fit.

Seems @BobZ managed to report it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1825399

I see Rene already dropped a link on launchpad back to this thread. I also tend to do this because this forum often has screenshots with explanations with more background info about a bug.

Even if the bug has been fixed by now, I don’t want to update in the middle of a project. Hope the following is useful to somebody in a similar position.

I worked around this issue by heading to Design Rules > Design Rules and increasing all clearances by 0.01 mm. So my default clearance of 0.20 mm is now 0.21 mm. I keep my grid at 0.1 mm, so tracks that would be just slightly too close are now forced a small distance apart due to my grid spacing.

Yes, a few tracks have to be shuffled around to get rid of real DRC errors now, but at least the interactive router doesn’t play these games any more. If the interactive router says the tracks will touch, DRC agrees. If the router says they won’t touch, DRC agrees there too. The grid simply won’t allow the traces to get too close anymore.