Pardon me if this is an old subject but I haven’t found an answer to this problem:
I am trying to use the Toner Transfer method to etch PCBs, so I need to generate one accurate printable plot of F.Cu and F.SilkS, mirrored and merged onto one single page for printing, and another accurate printable plot of B.Cu & B.SilkS, unmirrored and merged onto one single page for printing.
I have tried every combination of print and plot option without success. The problem is that print to PDF, which does offer both mirrored and print to a single page, previews correctly but as printed it has missing pads, and each of the plotting formats either has missing pads or incorrect pad sizing when printed. The problem is apparent with multiple components, but all are unaltered footprints from the library that comes with Kicad, using the same options. The problem is shown in the attached screen captures.
What is the correct way to merge F.Cu and F.SilkS onto one printed page, mirrored and accurately aligned, with correct and complete pad sizing, suitable for Toner Transfer? It looks like the only way is to plot individual layers to individual PDF files, then load them as individual layers into a bitmap graphic editor like Gimp, change the background to transparent, and then print as a bitmap rather than as a vector image.
Kicad version 2017-09-19 rev. dddaa7e69-makepkg, release build for Win7-x64
(for ngspice support).
Again, sorry if this is a newbie user error but this looks like a print & plot bug to me…
Thanks.
Dean
I have noticed a similar problem of missing pads on thru hole parts in my gerber copper layers.
The missing pads were all round and were missing from the B.cu layer and the F.cu layer.
After I manually set the shape of the missing pads (in their properties) from ‘oval’ to ‘circular’, all was well.
I have no idea why the pads were set to ‘oval’ in the first place, as the size was set to 1.7mm by 1.7mm (which is a pretty circular shaped oval to me).
Setting the shape to ‘circular’ fixed the problem with the gerber files. I noticed this in the round pads for (at least) the following footprints:
For the board I was working on, I am oke, but I do not feel comfortable with this little hack as a general solution.
Does anyone want to comment on that? Have I stumbled (and worked around) a bug, or am I overlooking a setting somewhere? Should this be fixed in the footprints?
It does seem odd to use “oval”, but if oval does not work, it should not be offered.
The most important task KiCad has is to produce an accurate Gerber plot
Edit
I tried the DO-35 example and made a test layout with two diodes, one with the circular pad modified to be really oval and both appear correctly on a Gerber plot
V5.0.2 test version
I have used 2.54mm pin headers quite much and they have worked well. They are made with a script, maybe that’s the culprit. @Rene_Poschl can probably tell more.
The scripts did at least sometime in the past create oval pads even if they had the same size in both directions. (The pad handler class did not care. I seem to remember that i added a check to it such that it should now output circular in such an instance. This might be in one of my open pull requests. Or it was merged with my last larger one.)
I have same isue. When I switched to version 5. On all my computers i have exact same error. Missing pads when svg export. It is problem from early versions to day (now i use 5.1.2). If I manualy change exact missing pad (pad-properties-some change) , then in swg is ok, but it is missing another. Please correct that.
