From gEDA's mailing list. Think of this as a coming soon post.
Hi all,
a long standing user request is to have thermals on SMD pads, mentioned e.g. in these 13 and 9 years old threads:
http://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Aug-2004/msg00118.htmlhttp://archives.seul.org/geda/user/Jul-2008/msg00411.htmlIn pcb-rnd we make things happen. This week's minute video demonstrates how to do this with pcb-rnd, using padstacks and a subcircuit:
https://archive.org/details/pcb-rnd-pad-thermalIt starts with 3 pad stacks and 2 silk lines converted into a subcircuit, terminal names ("pin numbers") assigned to the SMD pads. These steps are similar to how we used to build elements.
Then from 00:30 the thermal tool is used to toggle thermals on each padstack.
The generic polygon shaped padstack is in the video to demonstrate that we are free from special casing and hacks: the rectangular pad is really a rectangular polygon, not a square cap line, and everything (including the thermal tool) works on every object type.
Regards,
Igor2
I used GEDA PCB for a lot of years before switching to Kicad because of the faster pace of development and I still have many designs archived that I need to open with PCB-RND now and then.
What is the plan for schematic capture for pcb-rnd? without that in place the whole system is going to fall many years of development time behind Kicad.
saike at the moment we support gschem, kicad's eeschema, ltspice, tinycad and mentor (Mentor Graphics Design Capture). We intend to support more and we are aware to grow more we need newer infrastructure than gEDA... a plan is in the works.
This isn't a coming soon. This is a HERE NOW. Also from the email list...
Hi,
Over the last year I started working on a library to directly export our geometry from pcb-rnd into OpenEMS. In the course of doing that Koen (one of the contributors to OpenEMS) decided to join our project and he added hyperlinx format support.
The following video shows my recreation of one of his demos of OpenEMS simulating a hair pin (distributed element) filter using pcb-rnd instead of eagle which is what he was using.
So yea, we already have one way to simulate RF on boards and we are working on another.
Have fun,
Evan Foss
@saike - It's official pcb-rnd is splitting off from gEDA. gEDA is in our rear view mirror.
Good, I haven't checked in on PCB-RND for a while. I hope a few more developers come on board now.
Yes more people are coming on board. Some from the various factions of gEDA, others from KiCAD, and yet more from parts previously unknown.
Fusion916 Yes that is possible in fact it was one of the reasons I joined the project.
In pcb-rnd we have very good layer system at this point. It's one of the largest advancements we made over the mainline of pcb. It took a lot of work but at this point you can both add and subtract from the solder mask layer. There are several ways to do it.
1. The simple way: Turn visibilty on for the solder mask layers and use the polygon, line, arc, or text tools to draw and the features they create will be subtracted from the solder mask.
2. The subcircuit way: This is for people who want to have things like footprints that use pads as heatsinks (where you want exposed copper but solder paste is optional) or for people who are doing microwave design like hairpin filters.
http://repo.hu/cgi-bin/pool.cgi?cmd=show&node=subc1On a related note we now have a more functional thermal tool.
http://repo.hu/cgi-bin/pool.cgi?cmd=show&node=thermalsIn the mainline (2014 release of pcb) it was done by making elements that fit over the traces but this was painful, time consuming and very unpleasant to edit.