PCB text line spacing (feature request?)

[Martinn]

Hi all,

I love silkscreen text, particularly on debug connectors. Unfortunately labelling them properly is a pain

as you have to individually place and edit each label.
It would be fantastic if you could just type the complete text (for one side) in a text box and adjust the line spacing to match the connector pitch (2.54 mm in this example)!

[paulvdh]

There is an entry box for “Height” in the Text Properties box.
For some weirdo reason, setting the text height to 1.575mm gets you quite close to a line height of 2.54mm.

The good news is that even though the scale is off, you can set the size itself quite accurately.

[bertrand_meneroud]

Thanks for this idea, I’m using it.
note, for me it’s better with 1.56 in the height

[Martinn]

@paulvdh

There is an entry box for “Height” in the Text Properties box.

I thought this was rather obvious, so I did not mention it. But thanks anyway for answering.

Why I don’t like this method:

1. Text looks quite distorted if you just adjust the height. Most of the time my PCBs are rather dense so there is little space for silkscreen anyway and I often don’t have the space for widening the characters as well (as in your screenshot)
2. Finding the right “height” parameter is rather clumsy. I takes a lot of fiddling particularly for larger parts. Looking back, I even had this one fabricated:
   
   
   
   which does not match at all.

For that reason, I would suggest a “Line Height” parameter, which in these cases you’d set to 2.54 or 2 mm or whatever your connector pitch would be. Specifying a narrower height would result in a compressed (potentially overlapping) text, which is currently not possible unless you manually place the individual lines. Default or leaving this entry field open would result in the behaviour as it is now.

But judging from the responses so far, interest in such a feature looks rather thin…