I had to correct clearance violations on my board but after correcting them the fill won’t execute anymore!
The board has 3 filled zones on both sides GND and +3V3 and only one of the zones doesn’t fill what means the fill is working.
Anyone an idea why the fill isn’t executed and how to solve it?
KiCad does not fill “island” areas that create unconnected copper. After clearing your clearance violations, the connection of that part of the zone probably got too narrow. This is of course just (the most logical) guess.
That was my first thought too, but in this case it should fill (at least) where there is place enough to fill.
I my case it doesn’t fill at all on both sides
And I have no clue where to look at to solve it.
I’m not so sure whether my answer helped much. But I have seen several occurances where (a beginner) stated 3 or more times that this was not the problem while en the end it still turned out to be the problem.
Now you are on this forum for 3 years, and have posted some too, so probably not a beginner, but without some screenshots, or (much better) uploading the project there is not much we can see, nor advice we can give.
It is even getting worse: I removed the fill-arrays on both sides of the top board on both sides and redid them. After that exercise the bottom left board doesn’t refill too while I didn’t touch it at all…
To be continued I suppose.
I also added the projectfile so one can see what is happening. AS6501_V1prob.zip (320.9 KB)
Hope this helps to guide me in the good corrective action.
You are attempting to make a panel with three PCB’s, and each has it’s own outline on Ede.Cuts. This is not supported in KiCad. KiCad supports only one PCB in a project. If I delete the two small PCB’s, then the big one fills just fine:
So I guess that KiCad gets confused about which of your lines are the outside of the PCB. (The number of edges work mostly as a toggle switch, you can draw things on Edge.Cuts to make a hole in the PCB, but the final result has to be a valid outline, with no overlapping lines and endpoints never crossing each other.
On a side note:
Your have a big hole in your knowledge on how to design a PCB. First learn what a good GND plane is and how to make sure it’s a proper GND plane, and then modify your PCB’s before you have them made.
I got it: making one board of it solved the problem. Learned something new, thanks for that!
About your side node I admit I have more than a big hole in my knowledge about ground plane. I read a few books and articles about realising a “good” PCB but all writings propose different solutions for ground planes which make me feel the writers of the books are rather alchemists in stead of engineers although the line is thin… I guess my lack of experience in the field of PCB design does generate such remarks, but I’m always happy to learn new things!!
So any suggestion to improve my ground plane are more then welcome even so a guide to good readings for developing PCBs.
The video linked below form Rick Hartley about “How to achieve proper grounding” is worth watching all it’s 2 hours and 19 minutes at least twice (with some months in between). That statement alone should give you some idea of the importance of a proper ground plane.
A very learn-full lecture and it closed a (very) little my hole …
If I check my board against his viewpoint it is indeed a disaster so I started to route it with a plain ground plane. I’m curious where I will end up.
BTW, I also found sme more interesting lectures about this topic.