I am little confused on copper pours or filled zones (I assume that means the same thing?). I have a 4 layer board (3 signal and 1 ground plane). The 1st inner layer is signal with two smallish power zones and some signals and the 2nd inner layer is a full ground zone (plane).
For the ground pane I created a zone the size of the board outline and connected it to GND and chose thermal relief pads. I think that is all there is to it? This plane has no signals.
Do the other planes need copper pours? Do they connect to anything? I’m relatively new to layout (it’s been years since my last board) and I don’t recall the philosophy or correct approach. Reading other posts and tutorials and such I see pours being added to top and bottom but maybe I am not following why.
Layout questions:
I noticed my footprints had varying silkscreen ref designator sizes. Instead of manually fixing them all I went into the footprint editor fixed all the ref designators then updated the footprints from the library in pcbnew, however the sizes of the silkscreen items did not change. Am I doing something wrong?
Why do plated mounting holes require a ref designator and value field?
Is there a way to have through holes or vias take on the color of the plane it is being connected to? There seems to be only one color property for “through-hole pads” or “vias”
4) When routing a track how do I drop a via to connect to the ground plane for example but then continue routing on the same original layer? For example two pads connected to ground. I figured this one out.
I am using KiCAD 5.1.0 stable. I did see that option but I didn’t want their position reset which I assumed meant they would move to their original position.
“Positions” there refers to text item positions of those footprints.
But you shouldn’t edit KiCad’s own standard library footprints at all. Copy them to your own library first. And that strategy of editing library footprints isn’t good for mass editing texts. What if you have different kind of board and need to change all sizes again?
Use Edit->Edit Text & Graphics Properties in the layout editor instead.
Not sure how the “quote” function works but thanks for the response. I do not change any of the built-in KiCAD library footprints and have my own custom library.
And you make an excellent point and perfect alternative solution. Using the edit text & graphics option is definitely the right way to go I didn’t realize the capability and it worked perfectly.
Even when they are “invisible” they still seem to be visible. For example if the silkscreen color is blue and i make one of the ref des “invisible” it just turns grey. I understand that means it won’t be printed though.
If I understand you correctly you want “invisible” annular or welding ring so that you see continous copper and a hole. I don’t think KiCad can do that. However, you can use the 3D view and tweak some preferences there to get comparable results. It doesn’t show individual design items but copper, holes etc.
You don’t even need to do this on the footprint level. Text sizes are one of these things that routinely differ between the board and the library.
There is even a tool to change them for a selection of footprints all in one go. See edit -> text and graphic properties (version 5.1 but a similar tools existed in previous versions as well.)
I remember some years ago I read something about it in technical papers on my PCB manufacturer. As I am doing 2 layer PCBs and fill both sides with pours I thought - it doesn’t touches me so I’m not sure what were the arguments.
I imagine 2:
at internal layers they should be uniformly filled with copper just to help PCB being flat - I imagine PCB is not good glued if the press presses successfully half of PCB and not the whole because less material inside.
if some region of PCB has more copper then other then the spead of etching differs - the more precision PCB the more important problem.
Before any possibly desastrous global edit, I tend to exit KiCad and make a (temporary) zip file of the whole KiCad project. This lets you experiment without worries of permanent damage.
A less rigorours way is to save your project just before such an edit, and if “undo” [Ctrl +Z] does not work, you can simply reload from disk.
@Sprig Your screenshot from post #2 mentiones “Battery_Holders”, plural forms are only used in KiCad 4 libraries, not in KiCad V5.
There are project wide options for adjusting texts sizes in:
Pcbnew / Edit / Edit Text & Graphics Properties
(But I have to confess I never experimented with this).
Well, copper pours are filled zones on copper layers. You can put filled zones on non-copper layers.
Watch out, don’t use a filled zone on the Edge.Cuts layer. The manufacturers are only expecting lines (straight or arcs) on that layer so you might get unpredictable results with a filled zone.
Select the text you want to quote in the message list and you will get a quote button pop-up. If you aren’t already editing a message clicking on the quote button will open the reply editor with the quote code already inserted. If you are already editing a message, clicking on the quote button will add the quote code into the message where your cursor is.
That is how I was able to quote two of your different messages in this one reply.
