V6: Clearance Text on Copper

Layout
1

Hi!
I’m currently switching from v5.1.12 to v6.0.0 and encountered following problem.
To mark the different layers for the manufacturer, I’m writing the layer numer to the copper (Top=1, In2=2, In3=3, Bottom=4).
In 5.1.12 this was no big issue, the copper clearance around the numer is approx. 0.3mm.
The zone and track clearance is set to 0.15mm

Now in v6.0.0 the clearance around the numbers is approx. 0.7mm, which is way to much for my current layout.
The clearance settings in both files are the same.

Is there another setting to reduce the clearance around text on copper in v6.0.0?

1 Like
2

The clearance comes from normal clearances: board setup constraints, net clearance, zone clearance. But there’s some extra space around text, maybe it’s some fixed value and I don’t see a way to adjust it. IMO this should be adjustable in some way and you could file an issue for it.

3

Select the text object and the zone. Select “Clearance resolution…” from the Inspect menu. It may provide some useful info.

4

It does give the expected result from the known clearance values, but still the text has extra clearance which can’t be controlled and which isn’t visible as a number anywhere.

1 Like
5

Here a small example:

image
image1246×671 14.9 KB

image
image1246×441 20.9 KB 

Application: KiCad PCB Editor (64-bit)

Version: (6.0.1), release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.1.5
	libcurl/7.78.0-DEV Schannel zlib/1.2.11

Platform: Windows 10 (build 18362), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW

Build Info:
	Date: Jan 15 2022 13:36:27
	wxWidgets: 3.1.5 (wchar_t,wx containers)
	Boost: 1.76.0
	OCC: 7.5.0
	Curl: 7.78.0-DEV
	ngspice: 35
	Compiler: Visual C++ 1929 without C++ ABI

Build settings:
	KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
	KICAD_SPICE=ON
6

Do the same with ~{TEXTg}.

7

Definitely an improvement in the horizontal direction:

image
image1085×652 33 KB

8

The top might be the line-spacing getting added in when it shouldn’t.

The other two are harder to explain…

I’ll probably remember to dig into this soon, but if someone wants to log an issue that would be cool too…

9

Well, I’ve fixed it in 7.0, but due to the new font architecture it will take a completely different fix for 6.0.x…

1 Like
10

Wow! Somebody invented the time machine! (v.7.0) :wink:

11

Also fixed in 6.0.x now: Fix some overly-large text spacing. (527e06d9) · Commits · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab

2 Likes
12

There’s a ton of stuff in 7.0 already. See: Post-v6 new features and development news.

13

That’s exciting. Haven’t tested nightly builds yet, but followed the thread here.
(I was thinking of the bump from v.6.99 to 7.0…)

14

One thing I forgot to mention:it will still be larger than the spacing around text in 5.0 (because 5.0 failed to account for descenders and diacriticals correctly). But it won’t be as large as it was in 6.0.0 and 6.0.1. (The fix went in to 6.0.2, which should be released sometime in Feb.)

15

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