Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Jon Evans
There can also be very good reasons to want to generate isolated copper islands :-) I guess there was recently a debate about this on this email list. It should be an option on a per-zone basis IMHO, although I'm fine with it being disabled by default. You are right that if island generation is

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread José Ignacio
If your traces "choke" a zone out so that it can't fill the other side it may affect a very large area of the board. And it is the kind of thing you'd like to watch out for when you're moving traces around. For very good reasons Kicad will not fill isolated islands of copper if there is no direct

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Kevin Cozens
On 2017-09-19 01:08 PM, Jon Evans wrote: Thanks for the detailed feedback. I was definitely thinking of this as a long-term (post 5.0) project. I will take a look at the various aspects you mention and come back with a more detailed proposal. Live update of zone fills in the PNS router would

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Jon Evans
Hi Tom, Thanks for the detailed feedback. I was definitely thinking of this as a long-term (post 5.0) project. I will take a look at the various aspects you mention and come back with a more detailed proposal. Regarding DRC, are you the person in the best place to start that

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Tomasz Wlostowski
On 19.09.2017 15:26, Jon Evans wrote: > Yes, I used Xpedition in a past life and one of my missions is to bring > some of its cool features to KiCad :-) > > JP, I will do some tests on more complex boards and look in to possible > solutions. > I think this is quite a big challenge but want to

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Maciej Suminski
You may consider to launch a timer to interrupt zone refill operation if it takes too long. The same technique is done to avoid lags during ratsnest calculation for dragged components. It is recalculated when the user stops dragging the components for a moment. Regards, Orson On 09/19/2017 03:26

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Jon Evans
I don't think it's an either/or, I think you do both in an ideal world: mark parts dirty, and regenerate in another thread. This will also allow live recheck of DRC to be sped up by only rechecking objects that have been marked dirty. -Jon On Sep 19, 2017 11:01, "Clemens Koller"

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Clemens Koller
On 2017-09-19 15:59, Jon Evans wrote: > What I want to investigate first is how difficult it would be to subdivide a > zone into chunks that can be generated independently.  If this is done, than > the chunks can be done one after the other in a single-threaded world, or > split up between

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Jon Evans
What I want to investigate first is how difficult it would be to subdivide a zone into chunks that can be generated independently. If this is done, than the chunks can be done one after the other in a single-threaded world, or split up between threads if threading is possible. But, the key

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Wayne Stambaugh
On 9/19/2017 9:53 AM, Simon Küppers wrote: > I agree with JP, however I see a chance for KiCad, where this feature > might work better than in other EDA packages. > I think the only way to get this feature to perform well is to use all > available processor cores. > Maybe it is enough to

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Simon Küppers
I agree with JP, however I see a chance for KiCad, where this feature might work better than in other EDA packages. I think the only way to get this feature to perform well is to use all available processor cores. Maybe it is enough to distribute all the zones to the processor cores. However i

Re: [Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-19 Thread Jon Evans
Yes, I used Xpedition in a past life and one of my missions is to bring some of its cool features to KiCad :-) JP, I will do some tests on more complex boards and look in to possible solutions. I think this is quite a big challenge but want to take it on, because I think some of the underlying

[Kicad-developers] Live zone filling

2017-09-18 Thread Jon Evans
Hi all, I've been wanting to take a look at live zone filling, as it's a really useful feature that some professional EDA tools have. If zones refill in real time as you move things around, it's easy to make sure you leave enough space for your fill to succeed. I made a quick patch to pcbnew