Susan, Great example files!
I believe that you are the First person ever that has made the decision to have only one copper layer in your stackup. Usually, when I do a one layer board, it's a two layer design and just don't use the second side. What might be causing a issue for understanding, is the pcb has no clue about the physical stackup, it cares about the X-Y of your design, so when you have a board fabricated you supply the board house with the gerber plots of the layers you want, thats when a real decision about the layers of your board comes into play. When the board house i use for prototypes makes a one layer board it is usually a two layer board that they remove all the copper on the back side, so the cost for 1 and 2 layer boards are the same. This is because they panelize it with other boards they are making that day, that are more than likely 2 layers. Looking at Express PCB they only have 2 and 4 layer designs, and when I used them in the past I got bad boards, I had to solder all the vias (100+) to make an intern's design work, I was not happy and will never use them again, and always scare peeps away :-P Now to workaround your problem. If you add an additional copper layer and set it as the solder side you can continue your work. That is, add a new layer, then name it something like "DO NOT USE" or "jumpers" ( named for you, it's not special to pcb ) Assign it to solder side, then it will workaround both problems. Note.... I had to add the layer, quit preferences, reopen preferences, then assign the layer to it's group ( another bug :-P ) maybe the gang can clean up the minimum of two copper layers inside of the code, but I suspect that it would require some data structure rewrites. This would probably get rolled into the dream of arbitrary layers. Hardkrash On Jan 9, 2009, at 6:39 PM, Susan Mackay wrote: > Thanks for the replies. > > I'm using version 20081128. The following is the "about" text: > > > This is PCB, an interactive > printed circuit board editor > version 20081128 > > Compiled on Jan 7 2009 at 13:24:12 > > by harry eaton > > Copyright (C) Thomas Nau 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 > Copyright (C) harry eaton 1998-2007 > Copyright (C) C. Scott Ananian 2001 > Copyright (C) DJ Delorie 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 > Copyright (C) Dan McMahill 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 > > It is licensed under the terms of the GNU > General Public License version 2 > See the LICENSE file for more information > > For more information see: > > PCB homepage: http://pcb.sf.net > gEDA homepage: http://www.geda.seul.org > gEDA Wiki: http://geda.seul.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=geda > > ----- Compile Time Options ----- > GUI: > gtk : Gtk - The Gimp Toolkit > Exporters: > bom : Exports a Bill of Materials > gerber : RS-274X (Gerber) export. > nelma : Numerical analysis package export. > png : GIF/JPEG/PNG export. > ps : Postscript export. > eps : Encapsulated Postscript > Printers: > lpr : Postscript print. > > > Thanks for the reference to the tutorial. It is not one of the ones > that I had looked at. However, a very quick glance at the 3 example > "first board"s shows that none of them fit what I'm currently trying > to do which is a singe sided board with the copper on the top for > SMD components. The examples seem to show a single sided board with > the copper on the bottom, a double-sided board and the final example > with SMD devices but in a 4-layer board. I guess I'd better actually > read it and then comment!!!! > > I've attached a .zip file with 2 boards in it. "Board2.pcb" can use > used to demonstrate 2 of the problems. If you select the 'component' > layer and the 'rect' tool and draw a rectangle around the > components, you can see that the rectangle seems to be full and does > not make any holes around the pads. if you close it and open it > again (just so any issues are separated) and then select the 'rat > lines' layer and select the 'line' tool, you can move the pencil and > cross-hairs around until you click on a pad - at that point you get > the error mentioned in the OP and one of the CPUs becomes fully > loaded. > > The other board "board1LayerWithRats.pcb" demonstrates the other > problem. Simply open the file and click on the 'o' key and the CPU > will go 100% with the GUI being unresponsive. > > Thanks for the assistance. I really think I'll need to use something > like PCB for what I'm ultimately trying to do. At this stage I'm > using some prototyping boards for both learning about PCB and for > validating my design. At least the last part is still progressing as > I was able to download the 'ExpressPCB' windows software, recreate > the schematic and create the PC board I was trying to do with PCB in > about 3 hours (as opposed to about 4 days with gEDA software - very > steep learning curve!!! and slow learner!) > > Susan > > <PCBoards.zip> > > > _______________________________________________ > geda-user mailing list > geda-user@moria.seul.org > http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user