When using a TSOP-44 II footprint I normally need to alternate the side to connect the tracks
due to limitations of the via size of the manufacturer. Now I would like to make all front copper tracks straight and not angled 45 degrees. How can I do this?
@hermit i think you misunderstood the question. What @PeterS wants to have is orthogonal lines without the 45 degree sections.
@PeterS there is no setting that fully disables 45 degree sections but just place the via at a place where no 45 degree section is required. (The ctrl key might be of help as it forces the continuation of the current section of the track)
One option would be to temporarily change the grid to one which aligns with the centre of the pads (10mils appears to work for TSOP-44)
Then with āroute trackā selected, click a pad and hold CONTROL. This will limit movement to either X or Y, not both (same UX for most guiās). You can then terminate the traces where you wish. Then move onto viaās
Failing thatā¦ its editing the properties of the trace directly
The electons donāt care about 45 degree traces, so why would you?
I do use 45 degree tracks for āvisual appealā but thatās about it.
In EEschema I never change the grid, ut in Pcbnew I use the grid a lot.
I usually use a coarse grid to place the components, this makes it easy to make neat lines of them and for multiple 0.1" header to line up so they can mate directly with breadboards or Veroboard. and such.
While routing the board however I always set the grid to a small value. If you use a grid of 10mil for example then the 45degree stubs are smaller then the radius of your via and you do not see them.
I used to care a lot about neat track placement and nice lines. Then the interactive router was added to KiCad and I got annoyed becaused it messed around with my nice track layout. Then I got to my senses and fully embraced the interactive router. Now I fully trust and rely on the rules in the net classes and the interactive router. and laying out tracks goes much faster and is more fun than it ever was.
There is an odd satisfaction about laying nice looking tracks exactly as you want them and the annoyance of that getting destroyed was real. In retrospect is was a folly and time waster.
Do not confuse this with good layout. That is another chapter on itās own. But as a plus: If you make a good layout, and at the end spend a bit of time on visual cleanup then the board usually also looks good.
Unfortunately everything you need canāt be written as rules (at least in 5,1). For example I had a long paralel lines. I wanted to avoid cross-talk. I found the white papers on that subject and from them I got the rule - the track distance should be at least ā¦ . Donāt remember exactly but it was higher distance then between IC pads. There is no way to write such rule - the clearance at pads can me small (it is not a problem of isolation), but at long tracks should be at least ā¦
Long parallel tracks are indeed bad because of capacitive coupling.
A trick sometimes used is to intermix the tracks along their length.
For example an 8-bit databus going between a few ICās is bound to have a bunch of viaās. Those places can be used to change the order of the wires. For example put D4 between D0 and D1.
This distributes the capacitive coupling, so instead of 2 highly coupled tracks the coupling introduces a bit of noise into multiple different tracks, but in each track it stays below the threshold where it becomes a problem.
Thanks, just on macOS it is the COMMAND key. But then it works. However I cannot place a Via when the COMMAND key is pressed, in other words I first need to draw the track with COMMAND pressed, then release COMMAND, press V and the Left-Click the mouse. This places the via at the correct place at the end of the horizontal (in my example) track that I started from the TSOP-48 footprint. However now the layer selected is still the top layer and before I can start with the track I need to switch the layers. So the question, can I place a switch copper layer on a mouse click?
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
