Steven Michalske wrote: > This is something that needs a touch finer control. some of the > larger devices require a grid of solder paste on a pad. > > This might be something to have a calculator on.
[jg]Yes, I like that place for it too. An external calculator made in perl, python, etc. Another in a long line of footprint generators vying for popularity! define a volume of > paste per pad, and weather it is a grid. > this then gets scaled by paste mask thickness so that if i used a > 1/16th paste mask i'd get small holes, and a 1mill would error out > saying that the paste mask apertures were larger than the pad > dimensions - x% ]jg[Another thing I'd like to see is keeping tool paths separate from the PCB output, or at least be in a plugin, and not complicate the PCB file format, since all that is created from gerbers in business as usual now. That is, you make any solder paste gerber output be as drawn in the footprint, (whether generated by script or made with mouse clicks), and do not go further to tool paths. It might be helpful if PCB output included a translation to an outline that is exactly on the line defining the edge of a stencil, not a tool path, but it should also output ordinary gerber and postscript stroked paths at least. If we come up with a good way to generate an outline from PCB primitives that matches the gerber and postscript output exactly, I'd like it for all layers as another export format, since it is more like what many CAD software tools use -- they define surfaces more often than object volumes. In 2D volumes are just areas - stroked paths like gerber and postscript use. The spline and bezier curves of most CAD tools these days define surfaces, which is just an outline in 2D, so that would be a good format to have exportable. John Griessen _______________________________________________ geda-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-dev
