EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => KiCad => Topic started by: bson on November 01, 2015, 10:04:16 pm
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I've noticed there's no option in KiCad (bzr 6202) for a fill zone to have a thieving pattern. What's a good way to do this? I mainly want it reduce board warpage and perhaps strain. (Or more specifically, let the pattern help absorb up the strain from a large solid ground pour.) Setting a suitable grid size and manually clicking pads onto the F.Cu layer only (no mask)? If I do this, is there a way to easily hide them? Is there some clever way of managing them, for example by creating a component with 100 pads, no connected or visible pins, and a footprint that ONLY consists of a checkerboard of unlocked and unmasked pads? Then groups of pads could be moved around as needed.
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Just in case anyone is curious, I think I figured out a way to do this.
1. Create a footprint. Set the grid to 0.5mm.
2. Add a single rectangular pad. Set its size to 1.5x1.5mm.
3. Set its solder mask clearance to -1.5mm. This will make the solder mask cover it. (-0.75 probably works too, or maybe a little more to allow for rounding error.)
To add a thieving pattern (in the OGL renderer, didn't try the software renderer):
1. Switch to a 0.5mm grid.
2. Place the covered pad footprint created above.
3. Place a few more one grid spacing apart (0.5mm)
4. In the OGL renderer, select a group of pads
5. Duplicate (cmd-d on OS X) and place the copy 0.5mm apart from the others
6. Duplicate and place more
Maybe create a few more handy pattern, but I found the manual fill pretty quick and easy when standardizing on a base grid size. 0.5mm grid with 1.5mm pads works nicely.
Still need to confirm this works reliably with a gerber viewer. Will be using it on my next board to have significant bare space on the top layer.