I am getting huge numbers of errors that I do not understand. I’ve increased the size of the via annualar rings to get the number of errors down, but to be honest, I have not ever had this come up as a fault in any of my many other previous boards using a different layout tool. Anu ideas what is going on here?
And here are some of the error/warning locations. This is quite a big power board with big tracks etc, so the clearances are generally large.
Thank you
AndrewR
It looks like you have a mismatch between the constraints (settings of minimum sizes of objects on the board, like holes, annular ring width, trace width, clearances) found in menu File → Board Setup… → Design Rules → Constraints and the sizes of the vias placed on the board.
If the constraints are set correctly (according to the manufacturing requirements), you need to change the vias and clearances on the board.
Otherwise, if the constraints are unnecessarily large, you can lower them if you actually need small vias and clearances for the design.
I’ve gotten the errors down - I had the minimum drill size set to 0.5mm but many of the holes were 0.4mm - so 46 of the errors are now gone.
But the warnings now are mainly about the components not matching the library. Some of these are new parts I’ve generated, but many are straight out of the library. So, I still have to understand this problem.
AndrewR
The: “Footprint xxx does not match copy in library yyy” is not a very important warning for most people. It is mostly valuable for people working with database driven libraries, where a 1:1 mapping between used “parts” and the database must be verified. I do not know what your intentions are with this PCB, but you can (at least temporarily) disable these DRC violations. Just right click on one of them, and then select: Ignore all “Footprint xxx does not match copy …” violations from the context menu.
Just to give you a few more headaches . . . vias in pad is generally not a great idea, it can suck the solder away from your SMD part and give you problems.
Whenever I have such warning it always mean I have modified something in footprint and not updated it to PCB. Double click any footprint at PCB and there is something like Update footpint from library where you can change from updating this one to all.
I am doing it frequently as I always want all footprint be as in my library.
Hi - thanks that is what I ended up doing
Of course it could also be the other way round, a footprint that you added 3D CAD to from the PCB will not have that CAD in the library, or if you edited the footprint in some other way from the PCB the default behaviour is just to modify the local version on the PCB not the version in the library . . .
One more point, the KiCad libraries are read only, so you can’t easily modify them. If you need to make a change or add 3D CAD to a KiCad footprint you need to add the footprint to a personal library THEN modify it.
Right click on the footprint and then click Open in Footprint Editor will result in this . . .
Right click the footprint then click Properties and you have options . . .
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