Want Silkscreen but not component Silkscreen

Hi,

I’d like to add some text on the Silkscreen layer. However, I don’t want to see silkscreen text of components. The only solution I have now is to manually edit each component and uncheck F.Silks “Show” property.

Would be good to have another Silkscreen layer for user text.
F.Silks.User would be merged to Silkscreen when fabrication files are generated. In my case, F.Silks would not be selected and then not included in the global Silkscreen layer.

Franck.

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Hmm, a bit of a kludge, but could you say put your text in say Dwgs.User and then substitute that for F.SilkS after generating the gerbers? You may also want to edit the metadata at the top of the file if any. Let us know how you go.

If it is just about text then you can select not to include the references during gerber export. You can also use the global text edit option from the tool menu.

If this is about the part outlines then you will need to use a different workaround. You can use either a different layer for holding your silk text and rename the gerbers or you can use a text editor or script to remove silk from the footprint data within the layout file.

If you never want silk outlines on your designs then making your own footprints might be the best option. (You can even use some form of script to remove silk graphics from source footprints before inserting them into your own libs)

Thank you both of you.

I think, as you suggested, I’ll put my text and logo on an used layer and rename the gerber output file.

Another thing to put on my KiCAD development idea list.

In the “text and graphics” menu you can filter references and layer, and make them invisible

True. That’s almost good. However, there is still silkscreen coming from components (not text, lines).

My conception of using KiCad is not fully stable yet. At that moment I have references and values at CrtYd layer making that layer being identical with silk layer in program I used for PCB before. We used that layer for documentation and never send it to PCB fab (if we needed paint drawing we used other layer).
Recently I decided that from now on I will send the silk (only frames as texts are not there). I have modified that frames to distinguish element types (capacitors has rounded ends, diodes are one end opened).
I can’t rationally explain why after 30 years of doing PCBs without silk I decided to add it as I don’t believe that silk layer in any way helps the machine to place elements :slight_smile:
May be it is because in KiCad I have more layers so need not to limit myself so much.

Automated quality control and repairability are the reasons why silk makes sense even with automated assembly.

I have little knowledge about automated assembly but as I think the silk layer is less precise from all PCB layers I am surprised that it can be used for quality control. If I were to design quality control my first attempt would be to analyse element position against its pads and not silk, and if pads were not visible against fiducials but not silk.
If silk is used then my idea of marking diodes by opened at one side box can ruin the control :slight_smile:

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