Hi,
Please add Page Size option to Plot>pdf.
Normally, when I get PDF output from PCB Editor as Plot, it is saved in PDF along with Frame and Title Block.
But if there is an option to select Board Area Only, that would be great!
By default, plot to PDF from the PCB editor does not plot the drawing sheet, but there is an option which you may have enabled by mistake:
For the rest. PDF has always been a horrible format. It was never intended for post processing. If you want to post process (crop, scale and such) then plotting to SVG may be a better option.
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Thank,
What I mean is that there is an option to limit the PDF output to Board Area Only.
By disabling the option you mentioned, only the Title Bar will be disabled.
Currently, I have to output the PDF in the form of a plot and cut the board area with software such as GIMP and Libre Office.
This is relatively time-consuming.
A workaround is to set the paper size to some custom format, but this is also a bit cumbersome.
I do understand the problem. Often when generating documentation, it does not make much sense to print / plot the whole paper size (either with or without borders). For example when creating websites, text processor documentation etc. I guess there is also a pretty wide range of “depth” that is wished for in such output. From a simple screenshot to searchable text or embedded links. Such things quickly become complicated. Limiting the output to the smallest rectangle (with or without some border?) in which the PCB fits seems a logical wish. I guess the final implementation for a feature like this will be some settable viewport and part of the cam / output manager.
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Two gitlab issues which are sort of related:
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When in 2017 I moved to KiCad I was happy that I can at last finish using pdfs for documentation purposes.
In KiCad V5 I had to plot several layers and combine them using inkscape. But with V8 I can plot the pictures I need directly from KiCad (using different color set than for normal working).
I work having my 0,0 at KiCad 0,0 (top left sheet corner). In KiCad V5 it was the only option to have 0,0 for example in your PCB center. Now probably it can be done differently but habit is the second nature of man…
Because of this my outputs are partially out of sheets. So I open them with inkscape, select all and do Shift+Ctrl+R and save.the result. This picture then can be inserted into LibreOffice document.
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Yes,
But in my opinion, it would be much better if this was possible in Kicad itself and without the need other software.
Software like Altium has this possibility by default.
I don’t know Altium, but as one of best commercial PCB design programs it probably has hundred or more functions that KiCad don’t have. There are two questions:
- for users: how much you get per each cent you pay for the software?
- for developers: which missing features should we focus our limited resources on?
I have been working with kicad for some time and I am happy that I got to know this software and it has met my needs so far.
But the lack of some minor features or its difference with other software, such as the features I mentioned in this topic, can be a bit annoying.
I have tried many PCB design software so far, almost all of them limit the PDF output to board area only and do not output the entire sheet.