Hi Guys
I am very New to KiCad. I am using KiCad version 5.1.10 and making a PCB. At one point I am stuck.
I am working on a single side PCB where I am using Vias as a jumper.
Vias diameter I selected as
via diameter: 1.5 mm
via drill: 0.8 mm
It seems ok to me but when i see the 3D view of PCB, found out that the copper layer is hidden by green mask layer and very less copper area is visible, at this area soldering will not be possible.
My Question is how to decrease this green layer so that i can see the copper layer and sold the jumper easily.
Attach are the images file.
Do you intend to make the pcb yourself, and solder wire in the vias manually? In that case, it would be only a visual problem on the 3D-view.
Or do you want PTH holes for components? To install a wire left to right in the figure? In that case I would use a resistor symbol and make it 0 ohms.
I am making a design and forward it to PCB fabricator, after receiving the PCB I will solder the wire manually.
May be this is the visual problem but other pads of components show full copper layer for soldering
yes we can use a 0 ohm resistor but for this we have to add resistor in schematic and we don’t know where we should use via and where not. so i think via is best option as compare to 0 ohm resistance.
At some point we have to add more than 2 vias so it is easy to use via instead of resistor. This is what i think but in the forum there are experts too and i want to know about this
You can just add an extra circle in the F.Mask layer on top of the via to expose it. It doesn’t follow the via if the location is changed, so you may want to do it as the last thing.
Usually when someone wants to have a single sided board manufactured, people want to know why, because nowadays double sided isn’t any more expensive.
EDIT: Oops, sorry, I didn’t notice you have v5.1, so it looks a bit different, and you have to do some tricks with line width and radius to compensate for the lack of “filled” property, IIRC.
That should work @636Steve, but it kind of a patch to an issue that was wrong in the first place- I would not tell someone to use vias, but rather, @Abdul_Hayee should have gone back and added resistor symbols in the schematic and updated the PCB with those footprints. This would allow him to run and pass DRC, but as it is; I doubt it could. Hate to encourage poor design habits
Could you design the board as 2-sided but just plot only the front copper layer when converting to gerbers? While in 2-sided mode you put the jumper in the back copper layer (to satisfy DRC) which will get thrown away when plotting gerbers leaving only the vias.
