Track router creates errors while avoiding holes

[Lawrence_Ragan]

Been away from PCB design a few years. kicad 8 is great.
Footprints of components with leads include holes. The track router avoids these, but not quite enough to avoid creating errors. Since the design is for very low current, I simply edited the track width to clear the “too close” errors., but as there are a lot of them, it took awhile.
Not sure if this is a bug, but it is the only annoyance I have found with the new version. Kudos to the team!!

[paulvdh]

I am not sure what you mean with Track Router. I guess it is the Interactive Router.

Recently I helped another user to track down odd behavior. It turned out that it was related to: PCB Editor / File / Board Setup / Design Rules / Constraints / Copper to hole clearance.

Via clearance too large?

It is some kind of interference with: PCB Editor / File / Board Setup / Design Rules / Constraints / Copper to hole clearance. If I set this to a smaller value, then the extra clearance is gone. It is sort of logical I guess. If you specify a clearance between a hole and copper (from another net), then KiCad takes the biggest of the two clearances, and if you have very small vias then this copper to hole clearance is bigger then the via annular ring plus the track clearance. At least, I think t…

Is this issue related to what you see? This only is an issue when this “copper to hole distance” is bigger then the annular ring width plus the track clearance. This probably does not happen very often and that increases the chance for lingering bugs.

[Lawrence_Ragan]

I just used the default values for clearances, track width, etc. Only reduced track width to clear errors – to avoid shorts in the finished board – which I have yet to submit. Still checking footprints to make sure there are no nasty surprises.