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Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => KiCad => Topic started by: Trader on April 22, 2022, 08:53:37 pm

Title: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: Trader on April 22, 2022, 08:53:37 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euJgtLcWWyo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euJgtLcWWyo)
Title: Re: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: crgarcia on June 04, 2022, 08:48:04 pm
Just found this, and did it for my PCB. It looks so much better  :clap: :clap: :clap:

[attach=1]
Title: Re: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: Trader on June 04, 2022, 08:56:27 pm
Quote from: crgarcia on June 04, 2022, 08:48:04 pm
Just found this, and did it for my PCB. It looks so much better  :clap: :clap: :clap:

Wow, beautiful curves, congrats. Maybe you could post a picture from "Before". To compare the before and after. Thanks.
Title: Re: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: Doctorandus_P on June 04, 2022, 09:37:27 pm
This plugin is already in the "Plugin and Content Manager" in KiCad, which means it's just a few mouse clicks away if you have KiCad installed and you can easily try it on your own PCB.
Title: Re: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: voltsandjolts on July 12, 2022, 08:04:59 pm
Nice. This makes me wanna try the latest KiCAD, which is on the path to greatness BTW 8)
Title: Re: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: jnz on July 13, 2022, 06:42:16 pm
I tried this out and had an issue I can't reproduce now :\

It melted fine. But broke trace to pad clearances, and DRC couldn't/didn't detect it.

I didn't realize until I uploaded it to BayAreaCircuits, their automated system told me min clearance was 4 mil or so, which made no sense. Sure enough, there it was and I manually adjusted.

Now, when I go in and try and make the same happen. The DRC seems to catch it.

So, IDK, be careful and manually check clearances. I'll keep using it for now.
Title: Re: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: SiliconWizard on July 13, 2022, 06:50:54 pm
"The ultimate circuit board melting experience."
Yeah. ;D

The idea of curved traces is nothing new and the Topor autorouter is based on this. Of course then everyone is free to decide whether they want to use this. The video looks a bit too much like marketing crap to me. Sorry.

Now while the feature is still nice to have, I would be very wary to use it for any serious work at the moment. And I wouldn't be too surprised if there were still issues with DRC (which becomes pretty complex with curved traces). I wouldn't be hugely surprised if there were some bugs with the Gerber generation either.


Title: Re: Melt your circuit boards
Post by: crgarcia on August 14, 2022, 06:33:47 am
Yes! In my board I could not use it, because it broke DRC all over the place and it does not maintain differential pairs, but it still look very cool  8)

It supports doing it for selected parts of the PCB, so I guess I could do it for the areas that are not that squeezed