If I select “Print”, a few layers, and a “Custom” scale higher than 1 (say 2.0 or more) page border and title block disappear. A “Print preview” is centered on board (fine) but the border/title look to be zoomed as well, disappearing out of page limits.
Is that intentional or just a flaw?
I find quite normal that some tiny board could be zoomed for the documentation purpose, but the title block should be retained, as page border.
If you scale A4 format page by 141% you will end with A3 format page.
Page consists of your pcb AND border AND title block. Scaling means just that. ALL.
This is nonsensical, as it would be with any MCAD or any other EDA tool: you enlarge a detail for better visibility, still maintaining the page size.
This is basic technical drawing standard, applies to chip design (and their packaging, as you can see from any data sheet) as to road design (where you won’t need paper a few kilometers across).
If you opted to print border and title block, your printout will be the size of the page that you have set in File/Page setup, including TB and border.
Any scaling will affect all printed elements.
As for road designs, plans are drawn SCALED not 1:1.
In fact I was mentioning title blocks, which aren’t to scale.
Anyway, I tried with a simple design and found some (new) simple flaws.
If you choose a small enough page size, say an A6 equivalent, and “Print” “Fit to page” to an A4, you can get the page scaled properly: but only on first page printed. The successive pages miss any page border/title, and layout design has an offset from first page.
Things get even weirder if you select a “Custom” scale, as any scale you print (even at 1.0) produces the error.
An example, this is the printing on one page:
Sometimes that is true; sometimes it is not. For example, I may want to take my 11X17 page (U.S. B-size) and reduce it, including title block and frame, to 8.5X11 (U.S. A-size) to include in a presentation or documentation package. Other times I spend a lot of time playing with scripts in Ghostscript, to enlarge some detail to full-page size.
KiCAD’s definition of “scaling” is reasonable in some situations. Depending on my mood and the task at hand, it is either a “charming idiosyncrasy” or an “annoying quirk”. (My wife is that way, too.) I’d rather see KiCAD’s development resources directed to topics other than a more flexible approach to image scaling. I’m not going to change PCB software any time soon. (Or wives.)
Typical MCAD packages (from the venerable AutoCAD onward, AFAIK) take a different approach and I understand why they chose to, as I understand the KiCAD model.
If the end product of your design software is on paper, as with electronics schematics or graphical designs, as you would do with Inkscape or alike, choosing a “paper format” is meaningful.
KiCAD chose to have a “paper format” for PCB output, which IMHO is not proper. I bet almost no one has a PCB with full extents in ISO A4 or in ANSI B size. These formats are for a totally different purpose, where they identify the full size of the media output.
What “paper format” should I choose for a PCB that’s 20 inches wide and 1 inch tall? Sure, you can find one, or set it as “custom”. However there’s some irony in choosing “paper format”, for something as a PCB or an industrial machinery.
The solution with MCAD (for as much as I can understand, not being either a full time MCAD designer or a PCB one) is then creating views for printing. In those views you can scale anything, and following ISO and ANSI standards you place a title block, which dimensions aren’t relative to part scaled in the views, but to paper size. So, this is how ISO and ANSI, among others, think technical drawing.
Here it is why I strongly criticized the “paper format” setting around what should be a “PCB format”. And yes, you can set board limits using a larger “paper size”, it’s just the end product concept that is reversed.
That said, the limitation I see in KiCAD approach is that I can’t use its printing output directly for documentation, if I enlarge its output to enhance visibility. The title block disappears, and I have to post-process it some way, to add again the same data that is/was already in the title block.
Again: an issue that MCAD resolved decades ago.
If I were to stop using KiCAD I wouldn’t even have complained about it: for how tough I am, this is a constructive(?) complaint.
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