PDF of PCB with net labels?

[prof]

Hi,

for verification and documentation purposes I’d like to print the copper layers of my PCB with their nets, just like they’re rendered in Pcbnew. This would be immensely useful for verification and troubleshooting of the manufactured board without having to place a machine next to my test equipment. The only way I have found is to take a screenshot and print that but I was hoping there would be a better way than to print inverted bitmaps at odd scalings… I’ve tried the print function and most of the exporters but to no avail.

[PCB_Wiz]

@prof

for verification and documentation purposes I’d like to print the copper layers of my PCB with their nets, just like they’re rendered in Pcbnew. This would be immensely useful for verification and troubleshooting of the manufactured board without having to place a machine next to my test equipment.

Hmm… The screen rendering of net-names is highly Zoom interactive, and vanishes when zoomed out.
It’s not usual to need every single net name for trouble shooting, still you might be able to create labels on each segment, on a spare document layer using some script, but you still risk being ‘swamped in strings’…

Maybe a slightly smarter script could do a single tag per net, on the longest segment, but I’m not sure
how that would search visually.

Test points are rather more useful for trouble shooting, with a SCH.
Some carefully placed lines/arrow/text on a document layer, for key nets could be more practical and useful.
Even hints to ‘known issue’ areas…

[prof]

It’s not usual to need every single net name for trouble shooting

Well, it find that much more comfortable than using the schematics alone.

Test points are rather more useful for trouble shooting, with a SCH

Well, that’s extra work. I was kind of hoping I could simply have a printout with the additional information.

Even if a high resolution print is illegible there’s still the option of loading a PDF onto a tablet or another device and navigate around.

[PCB_Wiz]

@prof

Even if a high resolution print is illegible there’s still the option of loading a PDF onto a tablet or another device and navigate around.

OK… there was some nifty PDF work go past a while back, where libraries were scanned and PDF pages of symbol footprints created.

Full Footprint Library Lists ? (Ideally in ascii?)

I did not expect a circle have different radii in x and y. VALVE-NOVAL_P.kicad_mod: (pad 2 thru_hole circle (at 7.62 0) (size 2.54 5.08) (drill 0.99822) (layers F&B.Cu F.Paste F.SilkS F.Mask)) I always seemed strange these pad but never checked. footprint_script.7z (10.8 KB) footprint.pdf (2.4 MB)

You might be able to use that as a framework, to instead scan traces and add net-names into a PDF ?