Visible indication in Plot / fab file generation that DRC is out-of-date

[Julien Faucher]

Hi !
I would like to request a feature : I think that a mechanism that would check if a (ground) plane collide with a track which don't belong to that plane would be quite useful.

The problem is the following. Imagine that you are designing your PCB. You end it, DRC check it and take a well-deserved pause.
Some time later, you come back and make some pretty small arrangements in the layout to make it cleaner (You just push/drag/shove a track) and leave it for today.

The next day, you produce the Gerber files, send them and... Oh surprise ! Some tracks were fused with the ground plane... Happy track-cutting time :D

The problem is the use of the "Don't show filled area in zones" which is damn convenient but allow some serious mistakes.

I think that a pop-up like "Would you like to recalculate the zone filling before generating Gerber ?" or best :
"Warning, you got some tracks mixed up with some filling zones". could save some lives...
or even running a DRC check before the generation (with, maybe) an option to disable that in the general options

Thanks,
Julien FAUCHER

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

This has been requested before. There may already be a bug report filed against it. This was idea was rejected because most advanced users loath nag warnings. Automatically refilling zones on gerber generation is also frowned upon because it can change the board file with no changes made to the layout if the zone fill algorithm has changed. Forgetting to refill zones after making layout changes is really a user error and running the DRC should catch shorts. The only solution I would accept is an option to do this that is off by default.

[Julien Faucher (suzizecat)]

I looked into it and didn't found a bug report, so sorry about duplicate.

I don't know about all other CAD softs, but Cadence Allegro (which have lots of drawbacks on its own) just update the ground planes in real time. So it can't be any issue this way.
The problem with this method is that it's insanely slow since it have to rebuild the planes each time you touch a track and if you made some (quite strange) hacks to edit the plane, it would be overridden every time you edit something. (I can't come up with a case when this will happen, but it must be one !)

I fully agree with what you wrote and i didn't thought far enough about automatically refilling zones which is, after all, a bad idea.

However, I know that this is a dumb user error, but i think that a professional software should be able to prevent this kind of error. It's the kind of feature that may not be often useful (shouldn't be useful at all actually) but which can save your life from time to time.
An (optional) check before generating fabrication files to check if there is a conflict between tracks and ground planes (a track with a different netname than the zone it's running into) and if needed, a warning would be perfect, since it wouldn't even show up if you did the job properly, and will save your circuit if you forgot to press "B" without changing anything on its own.

With that said, I don't know at all how zone filling is managed and if the real copper outline are accessible, so i don't know if it's as easy as I think to implement...

[Maciej Suminski (orsonmmz)]

I opt for a small warning text on the bottom of the Plot dialog that would be displayed if the layout has been changed since the last DRC run. It should not be that annoying, but may save some costs.

[Julien Faucher (suzizecat)]

That's quite simple and if the message stand out (maybe a red font ?) it would do the job.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

A better option might be to add options to refill all zones and run DRC
before plotting gerbers. Although the plot dialog is getting rather busy.

It might be difficult to keep track of layout changes that effect the
zone filling between editing sessions.

On 8/24/2017 5:00 AM, Maciej Suminski wrote:
> I opt for a small warning text on the bottom of the Plot dialog that
> would be displayed if the layout has been changed since the last DRC
> run. It should not be that annoying, but may save some costs.
>

[Nick Østergaard (nickoe)]

Without sitting with pcbnew between my fingers. I remember JP added a button to recalculate DRC in the plot dialog.

[Julien Faucher (suzizecat)]

I don't think there is a need to keep track of precise layout changes, but rather the presence of any change (i.e not what action were made but "have an action been made ?").

So, in example, adding a "change_since_last_drc" boolean field within the "general" section of the kicad_pcb file should be enough... (I don't really know how it's managed internally but, to me, that seems pretty straightforward)

The button is present, but the real problem is rather about warning about the need to re-run DRC...

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

On 8/24/2017 8:54 AM, Julien Faucher wrote:
> I don't think there is a need to keep track of precise layout changes,
> but rather the presence of any change (i.e not what action were made but
> "have an action been made ?").

It would be annoying if a warning was displayed for every layout change.
 There are many layout changes that do not require a zone refill.

>
> So, in example, adding a "change_since_last_drc" boolean field within
> the "general" section of the kicad_pcb file should be enough... (I don't
> really know how it's managed internally but, to me, that seems pretty
> straightforward)

This would not work between editing sessions. It could be saved but I
would be opposed to adding this to the board file. It could be added to
the project file but that would fall apart when editing the board
outside the scope of the project.

>
>
> The button is present, but the real problem is rather about warning about the need to re-run DRC...
>

[Julien Faucher (suzizecat)]

I don't really get your point...

First I don't see what layout change don't need a zone refill... (Except if you don't work with a ground plane.)
By "layout change", I understand the move of a component, the edition of a track or changes in a zone outline (i may forgot something though)

Likewise, I don't understand why adding the "zone refill needed" information to the board file would be a problem, and why this wouldn't be efficient between editing sessions but we may have a misunderstanding here.

I was writing about treating this information like any board information and then saving it within the board file as well since you still have modified your layout without refilling the zones. I said in the "General" section as an example, but it may be elsewhere...

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

On 8/24/2017 12:32 PM, Julien Faucher wrote:
> I don't really get your point...

Apparently you have zones on every layer. This is not always the case.
It's always hard see it from another designers point of view.

>
> First I don't see what layout change don't need a zone refill... (Except if you don't work with a ground plane.)
> By "layout change", I understand the move of a component, the edition of a track or changes in a zone outline (i may forgot something though)

I can think of lots of layout changes that don't require zone refills.
If there is no zone on the layer you are working on (say top or bottom)
but there are zones in inner layers, moving surface mount components or
any traces that do not have vias will have zero effect on the zones on
the inner layers.

>
> Likewise, I don't understand why adding the "zone refill needed"
> information to the board file would be a problem, and why this wouldn't
> be efficient between editing sessions but we may have a misunderstanding
> here.
>
> I was writing about treating this information like any board information
> and then saving it within the board file as well since you still have
> modified your layout without refilling the zones. I said in the
> "General" section as an example, but it may be elsewhere...
>

Many users (myself included) do not like this kind of extraneous
information in their board files. This is particularly true of vcs users.

[Julien Faucher (suzizecat)]

Ok, thanks for the clarifications. Yet I only worked on 2-layers PCB, so I didn't thought about multi-layer PCBs. In this way, we could check if there is a zone on the layer we are working on. It won't remove all false detection but may remove a significant amount of these...

I understand why you don't like adding this kind of information to the board, particularly if you use a vcs. But since the edition of this field only occurs when you have another modification, the field won't do any harm since you'll only have it modified on an already modified file.
Even thouogh it may be annoying if you do some "partial commit" (i'm not sure of the name, but I mean "when you only commit hunks of codes instead of the whole file") but i'm not sure that lots of people are partially committing boards...

Anyway, since it should be an option, i don't see why it would cause much trouble...

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

I'm setting this to medium priority because it's one of those feature-requests/bug-reports that keeps coming up.

There is the output messages box just above the Run DRC... and Plot... buttons which gives us a logical place to put a message. Still not sure how to know when to display it, though.

[m (easyw)]

posted a comment here
https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1768229/comments/3

[PCB Wiz (1-pcb-wiz)]

 Reading all the comments, re No nags, and ability to skip Fill and DRC if you really, really want to, but also protect the casual or distracted user from a VERY serious error in plot, I have created a suggested menu change example that I think still covers all the Plot bases....

https://forum.kicad.info/t/last-mistakes-you-made-on-a-pcb-you-had-fabbed/7885/31

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

Fixed in revision a31017bc9cfc926cbc6759269867725c66c2539c
https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/patch/?id=a31017bc9cfc926cbc6759269867725c66c2539c

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

@Jeff, I just got around to testing this and I have some issues. I'm not sure what a "Draft Plot" is. I thought we decided to just to add a checkbox to enable/disable a DRC before plotting. I think the new behavior is more confusing than it needs to be. I opened several old boards and made no changes so the zones should not have needed refilled and yet the "Plot" function when ahead and refilled the zones. Refilling an unchanged board is not a good behavior. Is there any technical reason you did not just go with an enable/disable drc check box?

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

@Wayne, when opening a board we don't know whether the zones are out-of-date or not. So the code checks them and if the check produces a different fill then it asks the user if they want to re-fill or not. I suspect you saw the "Checking zone fills..." progress message. (If the user /does/ request a refill there's no progress message because the check did all the heavy lifting and doing the actual fill doesn't take any time.)

Once the board is open we do keep track of commits, so it will only run the check once between edits.

I didn't go with the checkbox based on the discussion on the Kicad.forums. Note also that this doesn't do a full DRC because adding a modal mode to the DRC dialog looked like it was going to be a pretty big change (with concomitant risk). Besides, there's a DRC button right there at the bottom of the dialog.

FWIW, the theory behind "Draft Plot" is progressive disclosure. Novices won't know what it means and so will use the safe method; more sophisticated users that read the tooltips can decide whether or not they're willing to give up the safety for a faster plot. (Draft mode printing prints faster but produces a non-final result, which is the analogy here.)

[Frank Severinsen (shack)]

@Jeff I belive the suggestions on the forum was made to avoid the checkbox in order to avoid a file modification. Im not very familiar with the codebase but settings global across projects are not saved in the project file? If this is correct the checkbox shouldn't be more troubles with regards to the feature freeze? (@wayne)

[jean-pierre charras (jp-charras)]

@Jeff,
The change works fine for me.
However, I agree with Wayne, Draft Plot is not a good name (and really hard to translate)
I prefer something like "Check Zones and Plot", and this button near the Plot button.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

@JP, the buttons are the other way around (Plot does a zone check; Draft does not).

How about changing Draft Plot to “Unchecked Plot" or do you guys think it need to specifically mention zones?

> On 7 May 2018, at 07:28, jean-pierre charras <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> @Jeff,
> The change works fine for me.
> However, I agree with Wayne, Draft Plot is not a good name (and really hard to translate)
> I prefer something like "Check Zones and Plot", and this button near the Plot button.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a bug assignee.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1712579
>
> Title:
> Visible indication in Plot / fab file generation that DRC is out-of-
> date
>
> Status in KiCad:
> Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Hi !
> I would like to request a feature : I think that a mechanism that would check if a (ground) plane collide with a track which don't belong to that plane would be quite useful.
>
> The problem is the following. Imagine that you are designing your PCB. You end it, DRC check it and take a well-deserved pause.
> Some time later, you come back and make some pretty small arrangements in the layout to make it cleaner (You just push/drag/shove a track) and leave it for today.
>
> The next day, you produce the Gerber files, send them and... Oh
> surprise ! Some tracks were fused with the ground plane... Happy
> track-cutting time :D
>
> The problem is the use of the "Don't show filled area in zones" which
> is damn convenient but allow some serious mistakes.
>
> I think that a pop-up like "Would you like to recalculate the zone filling before generating Gerber ?" or best :
> "Warning, you got some tracks mixed up with some filling zones". could save some lives...
> or even running a DRC check before the generation (with, maybe) an option to disable that in the general options
>
> Thanks,
> Julien FAUCHER
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1712579/+subscriptions

[jean-pierre charras (jp-charras)]

Yes, I know.

My proposal is to have the 2 buttons:
"Check Zones and Plot" and "Plot"
This is not ambiguous, and easy to translate.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

While I hate nanny software, I’m not sure that will solve the number of bug reports we get on the issue. There’s already the DRC button in the dialog, and people evidently don’t use it.

But maybe putting the Check Zones and Plot button over on the right and having it be default would be enough?

> On 7 May 2018, at 10:18, jean-pierre charras <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Yes, I know.
>
> My proposal is to have the 2 buttons:
> "Check Zones and Plot" and "Plot"
> This is not ambiguous, and easy to translate.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a bug assignee.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1712579
>
> Title:
> Visible indication in Plot / fab file generation that DRC is out-of-
> date
>
> Status in KiCad:
> Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Hi !
> I would like to request a feature : I think that a mechanism that would check if a (ground) plane collide with a track which don't belong to that plane would be quite useful.
>
> The problem is the following. Imagine that you are designing your PCB. You end it, DRC check it and take a well-deserved pause.
> Some time later, you come back and make some pretty small arrangements in the layout to make it cleaner (You just push/drag/shove a track) and leave it for today.
>
> The next day, you produce the Gerber files, send them and... Oh
> surprise ! Some tracks were fused with the ground plane... Happy
> track-cutting time :D
>
> The problem is the use of the "Don't show filled area in zones" which
> is damn convenient but allow some serious mistakes.
>
> I think that a pop-up like "Would you like to recalculate the zone filling before generating Gerber ?" or best :
> "Warning, you got some tracks mixed up with some filling zones". could save some lives...
> or even running a DRC check before the generation (with, maybe) an option to disable that in the general options
>
> Thanks,
> Julien FAUCHER
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1712579/+subscriptions

[Frank Severinsen (shack)]

@Jeff @JP
why not just have the checkbox in settings which enables the check before plotting?
this way it's being set once and then there is now way around it.
Also this would avoid the need for multiple buttons which might just be more confusing.

[jean-pierre charras (jp-charras)]

This is a possibility.
I do not have a strong opinion.

However, there is *a lot* of check-boxes.
A new checkbox is not as visible as new button.

@Jeff,
the DRC button is a recent change, and moreover many users still work with the 4.07 version.
so it is not surprising many users do not use it.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

On 5/7/2018 5:18 AM, jean-pierre charras wrote:
> Yes, I know.
>
> My proposal is to have the 2 buttons:
> "Check Zones and Plot" and "Plot"
> This is not ambiguous, and easy to translate.
>
I agree with JP's suggestions. "Plot" should plot the board as is. I
see no ambiguity here. "Check Zones and Plot" also does exactly what it
says. This should be clear to users. If you want to eliminate the zone
checking step, you could implement this as a "Refill Zones and Plot" button.

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

On 5/7/2018 5:55 AM, Frank Severinsen wrote:
> @Jeff @JP
> why not just have the checkbox in settings which enables the check before plotting?
> this way it's being set once and then there is now way around it.
> Also this would avoid the need for multiple buttons which might just be more confusing.
>

This was my original suggestion. As JP mentioned, it's possible this
option could get overlooked as there already are a lot of check boxes in
the plot dialog. I don't have a strong preference for either a check
box option or a separate button.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

I think the highest priority is to have the default action be the safe one. That’s not really compatible with the buttons unless we’re willing to flip the sense (having “Plot” do a zone check, and “Whatever-we-call-it” do a plot without zone checking).

So I think going back to the checkbox is the best way forward.

> On 7 May 2018, at 12:58, Wayne Stambaugh <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> On 5/7/2018 5:55 AM, Frank Severinsen wrote:
>> @Jeff @JP
>> why not just have the checkbox in settings which enables the check before plotting?
>> this way it's being set once and then there is now way around it.
>> Also this would avoid the need for multiple buttons which might just be more confusing.
>>
>
> This was my original suggestion. As JP mentioned, it's possible this
> option could get overlooked as there already are a lot of check boxes in
> the plot dialog. I don't have a strong preference for either a check
> box option or a separate button.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a bug assignee.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1712579
>
> Title:
> Visible indication in Plot / fab file generation that DRC is out-of-
> date
>
> Status in KiCad:
> Fix Committed
>
> Bug description:
> Hi !
> I would like to request a feature : I think that a mechanism that would check if a (ground) plane collide with a track which don't belong to that plane would be quite useful.
>
> The problem is the following. Imagine that you are designing your PCB. You end it, DRC check it and take a well-deserved pause.
> Some time later, you come back and make some pretty small arrangements in the layout to make it cleaner (You just push/drag/shove a track) and leave it for today.
>
> The next day, you produce the Gerber files, send them and... Oh
> surprise ! Some tracks were fused with the ground plane... Happy
> track-cutting time :D
>
> The problem is the use of the "Don't show filled area in zones" which
> is damn convenient but allow some serious mistakes.
>
> I think that a pop-up like "Would you like to recalculate the zone filling before generating Gerber ?" or best :
> "Warning, you got some tracks mixed up with some filling zones". could save some lives...
> or even running a DRC check before the generation (with, maybe) an option to disable that in the general options
>
> Thanks,
> Julien FAUCHER
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1712579/+subscriptions

[Wayne Stambaugh (stambaughw)]

On 5/7/2018 10:46 AM, Jeff Young wrote:
> I think the highest priority is to have the default action be the safe
> one. That’s not really compatible with the buttons unless we’re willing
> to flip the sense (having “Plot” do a zone check, and “Whatever-we-call-
> it” do a plot without zone checking).
>
> So I think going back to the checkbox is the best way forward.

I'm fine with this. I just found it unsettling that the current changes
you made would ask me to refill a board that has not been changed and
has been in production for over 3 years. Obviously something changed in
the zone filling algorithm that creates a different fill from the time
the board was originally filled. This may or may not be an issue but I
really don't want to find out.

>
>> On 7 May 2018, at 12:58, Wayne Stambaugh <email address hidden> wrote:
>>
>> On 5/7/2018 5:55 AM, Frank Severinsen wrote:
>>> @Jeff @JP
>>> why not just have the checkbox in settings which enables the check before plotting?
>>> this way it's being set once and then there is now way around it.
>>> Also this would avoid the need for multiple buttons which might just be more confusing.
>>>
>>
>> This was my original suggestion. As JP mentioned, it's possible this
>> option could get overlooked as there already are a lot of check boxes in
>> the plot dialog. I don't have a strong preference for either a check
>> box option or a separate button.
>>
>> --
>> You received this bug notification because you are a bug assignee.
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1712579
>>
>> Title:
>> Visible indication in Plot / fab file generation that DRC is out-of-
>> date
>>
>> Status in KiCad:
>> Fix Committed
>>
>> Bug description:
>> Hi !
>> I would like to request a feature : I think that a mechanism that would check if a (ground) plane collide with a track which don't belong to that plane would be quite useful.
>>
>> The problem is the following. Imagine that you are designing your PCB. You end it, DRC check it and take a well-deserved pause.
>> Some time later, you come back and make some pretty small arrangements in the layout to make it cleaner (You just push/drag/shove a track) and leave it for today.
>>
>> The next day, you produce the Gerber files, send them and... Oh
>> surprise ! Some tracks were fused with the ground plane... Happy
>> track-cutting time :D
>>
>> The problem is the use of the "Don't show filled area in zones" which
>> is damn convenient but allow some serious mistakes.
>>
>> I think that a pop-up like "Would you like to recalculate the zone filling before generating Gerber ?" or best :
>> "Warning, you got some tracks mixed up with some filling zones". could save some lives...
>> or even running a DRC check before the generation (with, maybe) an option to disable that in the general options
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Julien FAUCHER
>>
>> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1712579/+subscriptions
>

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

Fixed in revision ad6956b05df41deffd32e859c02121b0d254ba2f
https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/patch/?id=ad6956b05df41deffd32e859c02121b0d254ba2f

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

@Jeff- The drill button is cut off on Linux now (just says "Generate D")

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

Fixed in revision a997aad14498cfd75866f5fcaac334ed0f038743
https://git.launchpad.net/kicad/patch/?id=a997aad14498cfd75866f5fcaac334ed0f038743

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

@Seth, when you get a chance can you test again on GTK? (Issue doesn't appear on Mac, so my "fix" may or may not work.)

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

Hi Jeff-

The Generate Drill File... button now displays correctly but I notice that now the "Plot" button is squished together and on the wrong side. I think it was correct before. Any objection to changing it back?

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

@Seth, actually the button order was incorrect before. The new layout follows the UI guidelines by using a wxStandardDialogButton sizer.

We used to layout the buttons ourselves, but that meant they were only right on one platform (in this case, MSW).

[Frank Severinsen (shack)]

Hi Jeff I tried the newest "fix"
the plot button is kinda squashed.
If I resize it the slighest bit, it looks fine again

[Frank Severinsen (shack)]

and after resizing

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

OK, understood.

I have a pretty strong preference for logical order in this case. When I open that dialog, I'm going to do three things in order: Plot, Generate Drill Files and then Close. The previous layout was correct for this. Having the buttons similarly sized also facilitates the action.

[jean-pierre charras (jp-charras)]

@Jeff,
@Jeff,

I don't think using wxStandardDialogButton is a good idea in this case.
wxStandardDialogButton is very useful for standard buttons (OK, Cancel, Apply), but this is not the case here.
And the order of our buttons has nothing to do with OK, Cancel, Apply.

Using wxStandardDialogButton, not designed for that, can only create issues depending on platforms.

Moreover labeling a button " Plot " make is hard to translate (read: not translatable), because spaces have no meaning.
If you want a longer string use instead "Plot Board" on something else.

I have a W7 + linux/GTK install.
I can fix this issue if you want.

[Jeff Young (jeyjey)]

@JP, I just merged another attempt; if that doesn't work then I'll hand it over to you.

I do think it's important to use a wxStandardDialogButton sizer, though, as it gets the Plot button on the correct side for the Mac (default buttons must be on the far right according to the Mac UI guidelines).

(MSW, in contrast, wants the default button at the left side of the right-most group.)

[jean-pierre charras (jp-charras)]

It looks good now.
(Tested on ubuntu/unity and ubuntu/kde)
Thanks.

[Franck78 (fbourdonnec)]

The solution as quite simple.
Dirty bit for each zone.

The essence of the "zone thing" is to tell the router if a track segment is inside a zone or not.
I presume it is a highly optimized routine called to decide the fate of an action (denied or not).

So, as soon as you asserted an action inside a zone, flag it Dirty Zone.
The dirty flag is set by zone edit.
The dirty flag is saved with Zone data.
The dirty flag is cleared by refill only.
For simplicity Ctrl-Y never touches it.

Once a dirty flag is set, you even need to bother check.

Needless to say gerber function is allowed with a big warning.
The flag can also be used to trigger a forced rebuild with "CleanUpTrack&Vias"