Layer mixing color schemes help tremendously when routing multi-layer boards

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41

It would be interesting to enable two more preference options:
OpenGL Routing Layer-Blend Mode
Cairo Routing Layer-Blend Mode

Both default to “normal” (current transparency setting) but then allow for the full selection of blend mode/composite operators, so people could experiment with what works best. Hopefully, the Cairo version and OpenGL version are both high enough to allow separate alpha calculation, which might also be supplied as an options as well. I suspect the number of options available, along with the color selection options, is too great for any single developer to test effectively enough to choose those parameters and bake them in. Might be interesting to allow these in a color palette setting as well. So I guess that’s five new options.

  1. OpenGL (“Advanced Canvas”) routing blend mode
  2. OpenGL routing alpha blend mode
  3. Cairo routing blend mode
  4. Cairo routing alpha blend mode
  5. Blend mode Override color palette setting

Where the selection algorithm is:

  1. If given in color palette AND override=false, use palette setting
  2. Else, use preference setting

This would allow a large number of settings to be tested by users and to determine if further options are warranted (e.g. if the standard display “non-routing” blend modes should be changed).

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The limitation is always laptops, with some broken OpenGL driver on the built in graphics and no way to upgrade. Even new machines can have problems.

43

Still,
I am convinced a lot can be achieved by just handling the opacity in a smart way in combination with the order in which the layers are drawn. I am even convinced that with the right combination of this it would already be better than the old XOR.

One of my earlier posts about this:

(thought I made a more extensive post with better worked out ideas somewhere, but it seems lost in the bulk of history)

1 Like
44

Hi all,

I haven’t read this whole thread, but it’s true that KiCad 5 is not great at this compared to other tools. It’s something I’m putting significant development energy into improving for V6.

Going back to XOR I think is the wrong way to think about this – XOR is not very useful as a blending operation when you let people choose arbitrary colors, at least not if you want things to make sense.

I think a better way, based on my use of other tools and some experiments I’ve done in KiCad that are not yet ready to merge, is to do things that make it easier to manage what is visible, and to emphasize what is important. For example:

  • Easy load and store of layer visibility states
  • Opacity setting based on object type, not (just) on layer
  • More flexible “high-contrast” mode including completely isolating a single layer quickly, applying an opacity multiplier to inactive layers, and things like that
  • A better default color scheme with higher contrast
  • Better net isolation / focus modes
  • Better hole rendering

Stay tuned as I expect some of this to be in master sometime this summer.

2 Likes
45

Do you also have a solution that allows bright colours with opacity (ignoring background for opacity is a simplistic way i can come up but i have no clue if this would be possible)

46

Check out LayerViewSet plugin as one way to implement load/store of any desired combination of layers and types visibility (both tabs). It allows loading and storing on a stack, named settings (which also functions as “store”), and direct access to any named set or set on the stack, and independent load/store of layers, types, or both.

47

We could allow different blend modes to be used (although there are some differences between OpenGL and Cairo that mean that it will likely never be possible to get them to look identical)

Yes this is a good add-on, I recommend people use it.

48

Also, one reason I am not so focused on blending modes right now: I haven’t used another ECAD program that lets you configure them, and I have never wished for it. I suspect if some of the other features I mention get into KiCad, looking at better blending won’t be as called-for.

Altium uses a very similar blending operation to KiCad, for example, and I’ve never thought that the way opacity worked in that program made it hard to use or see things. It all comes down to being able to apply transparency to the right objects at the right time, in my opinion.

49

So, serious question, what are the right times? I.e what events with KiCad would cause a change in layers’ transparency? I can think of:

  1. Normal view
  2. Routing, where transparency might be different depending on which layer is being routed.
  3. Highlighting.
  4. Select? (Not sure about this one, the element highlighting seems sufficient)

Any others?

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Sorry, I wasn’t super clear in my other post – I wasn’t talking about dynamic changes, just better flexibility. Per-type opacity and better high-contrast mode are 90% of what I want. I actually don’t want per-copper-layer opacity control, and think that it’s counterproductive once you have per-type opacity (I’ve been playing with this in a branch). But, opacity boosts in high-contrast mode could be interesting.

2 Likes
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