Is there a way to identify which drill sizes are associated with particular footprints ? It’s fine in small pcbs but tracking down a particular drill size is a pain when the numbers climb. The “ inspect “ option gives a summary but there’s no way to associate this with what footprint they apply to.
You can generate a set of Gerber files and load them in Gerbview (also a part of KiCad).
It can also read drill files.
In the plot process, KiCad can also generate a drill plot file, which is a graphical presentation of all the holes and their diameters with: PCB Editor / File / Plot / Generate Drill Files / Generate Map File
Or just use: PCB Editor / Inspect / Show Board Statistics (Oops, you already found that).
Below is a drill map file in .pdf format generated by KiCad.
HB-UNI-Sen-POOL-PTH-drl_map.pdf (24.4 KB)
As a (postable but lower resolution) file it looks like:
Each hole size has it’s own little icon, and the PCB gives a quick overview of which hole size is used where. But it does not directly tell you which hole size is used in which footprint, but getting a good idea of that is quite easy from the map file. Normally each footprint just has a single, or a very small number of hole sizes.
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Mr Vdh…
May I call you Paul?
If each drill size has it’s own icon, why are there 2 separate entries (icons) for the 0.800mm drill size? Looking at the above drill map makes me want to think that one icon (diamond) is from footprints and the other (square) is from vias. Yes??? No???
But why are there 2 entries??? A 0.800mm drill is the same as a 0.800 drill. I thought.
Thank you for all your time on this forum.
I have not bothered to check, but it’s probably a rounding thing.
One drill may be 0.799994 and the other 0.800000003, which makes them separate drills, but the same diameter if rounded to three decimals.
The important thing is though that you have a quite good overview of the drills from the drill map file.
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Thank you…
That must be a very precise (and expensive) drill set!!!
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Thanks for that. It’s a reasonable solution , it would be great to have an interactive drill map
There are many quite obvious ways to improve upon this and the limiting factor here is almost certainly the number of KiCad developers and the time they are spending on writing software for KiCad.
There are some 1400 open issues for KiCad on gitlab.
Gerbview already has highlight functions for footprints, nets, D-codes and adding a similar box for drill sizes would be a small and easy addition. Maybe a request for this is already among those 1400 issues on gitlab.
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These are probably “plated” and “non plated” 0.8mm holes, two different types, but the same drillbit.
Nope, it’s the drill map for the PTH only (see the file name).
I also had a closer look at the drill file itself, and Tool 4 and Tool 5 do indeed have the same diameter and other properties.
T4C0.800
; #@! TA.AperFunction,Plated,PTH,ComponentDrill
T5C0.800
; #@! TA.AperFunction,Plated,PTH,ComponentDrill
So I see no reason why these holes use different tools.
The only difference I see is that the “horizontal squares” are via’s, while the “diamonds” are pads of IC’s resistors and other footprints. At the moment I do not consider this important enough to create an issue for it on Gitlab.
More important in this context though is that with the drill file and the drill map map file you have enough information to see and analyze such things. It’s also good enough to correlate with the PCB itself in the PCB Editor.
Sure, it would be nice if you could directly click on those holes, view their properties or highlight all holes for a certain tool directly in GerbView, but it’s not essential.
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There are many quite obvious ways to improve upon this and the limiting factor here is almost certainly the number of KiCad developers and the time they are spending on writing software for KiCad.
There are some 1400 open issues for KiCad on gitlab.
sure , I accept that , even to extend the report to include the footprint reference identification would be useful
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