After finishing my layout, I realize it’d be better if F.Cu was B.Cu (to avoid heat sink touching trace).
Is there an easy way to switch Back and Front layers (copper and others)
You would need to flip the footprints to make the devices work on the other side if you want the back to switch with the front as you see it… and as that means re-routing it’s not going to work as you expect.
If you would flip everything then the back would just look like the front and vice versa and you wouldn’t gain anything…
I naturally could be way off and misunderstood your question, so you’d have to do some more explaining…
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Hi Joan,
Many thanks for your reply! I don’t understand why the footprints would have to change (sorry I should have mentioned that my board has only through-hole components only, and they are all on the ‘F’ side). I wasn’t thinking of ‘flipping’ the Cu layers, just changing their order in the Components -F.Cu-laminate-B.Cu stack - like you would with a stack of cards.
The desired order would be: Components (stay in place) - tracks (currently on B.Cu) - laminate (stays in place) - tracks (currently on F.Cu).
None of the layers should be mirrored, reflected, or rotated, just ‘pushed through’ the laminate…
Hm… ok then, so you got a case where this is possible then.
In that case, open the .kicad_pcb file of that project in a text editor like notepad++ that is capable of replacing strings by rules.
Then search for entries like these:
(segment (start 166.75 72.75) (end 167.5 72.75) (width 0.25) (layer F.Cu) (net 0))
‘segment’ denotes a track
You can swap the ‘F’ for a ‘B’ and it will be on the other layer…
Just make sure, you’re swapping this for the segments only and not the footprints, which also have the ‘(layer F.Cu)’ in their definitions…
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Thanks Joan, I was hoping for something like that (if not readily do-able with GUI).
I guess I’ll write a perl script because that’s fun 
Many thanks!
I your case you could just “cheat” to the PCB supplier and swap the names the gerber files.
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@Joan_Sparky I tried to change the B.Cu to F.Cu by editing the file. But, still after opening Pcbnew to view layout, it’s same…no change in tracks. Plz help.
