Is it good to have DRC that take Court Yard + some percent of component high for component spacing check?

Is it good to have DRC that take Court Yard + some percent of component high for component spacing?

AFAIK the v5.0.1+ DRC has a switch for courtyard checking.

Regarding component height, as far as the non-3D portions of the code (of which DRC is a part of) the board is only represented as multiple 2D planes. There is no height component in the footprint, other than a (possibly missing) 3D object’s bounding box. Also, I’m not sure how knowing the height of components would be of any help without knowledge (that KiCad doesn’t have) of the design vertical space allotment for the assembled PCA**.

What are your thoughts (that I haven’t thought of) as to why component height is relevant to spacing check?

** PCA = Printed Circuit Assembly, consisting of the PCB and all components.

I thinking to help people like me to see or make sure how good are component spacing are for rework on a dense PCB. I think the high would be better to ensure that. Because, let say my twister workable angle is ~70 degree. So I need ~35%*high component for hand soldering. I can do that by change all my court yard, but then it not very flexible for project to project…

I don’t think the height of the component which is under work affects hand soldering. The surrounding components create problems. The courtyard can’t take that into account. If you have 3d models you can check it visually, but you need experience to tell what’s the best location and direction for the iron and tweezers.

If there is a draw extended from court yard with the % of high top & botom - it would help place components in with more reasonable spacing. The tall components around will show up as a large space needed. Then it should take care the issue @eelik talking about, itsn’t it? And direction is another thing that easy to think about. But the high of component at calculation for those are to hard to manually checking. 3D check is an eye checking with relative scale of the component around, and it not very a good concrete measurement.

  • This would be nice if footprint have way to store high of top and bottom information. Then simple box 3D model can be applied by default without any wrl, or step files. Court yard can be use to show the required spacing if needed.
  • Event if the menu in pcbnew can show the “Doc” to open the datasheet/footprint drawing define from footprint fields would be nice too. (I think)

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