PCBnew: Errors when generating drill map file

[Victor W]

We have a physically large board (180x240cm) with a number of different drills (around 35 different via sizes, etc). We have encountered various errors when trying to export a drill map in svg, pdf, or ps formats.

ERROR WHEN EXPORTING TO PDF/PS:

When trying to generate a drill map file in pdf, or ps, the size of the pdf page is insufficient to contain the entire drill table, and so part of it is cut off. It suggests that pcbnew is not taking the length of the drill table into account when scaling the pdf.

In addition, it looks like the page size that the document is scaled to is fixed - it would be nice to manually specify the size so that we could, in principle, export this to actual size.

ERROR WHEN EXPORTING TO SVG:

When exporting to SVG, we're able to see the entire drill table, but only a fraction of the drill holes are listed. The remaining drill holes do not show up in the svg file. This make it impossible for us to edit the drill table manually.

WORKAROUND:

Right now we're working around by generating the drill map as a gerber, opening it up in gerbv and then exporting it in svg format from gerbv.

[Michael Kavanagh (michaelkavanagh)]

Please copy the full version information from About KiCad -> Copy Version Info.

[Victor W (vicw)]

Application: KiCad
Version: (5.99.0-360-ga6b94b37e), debug build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.4
    libcurl/7.64.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1b zlib/1.2.11 libidn2/2.1.1 libpsl/0.20.2 (+libidn2/2.1.1) libssh2/1.8.1 nghttp2/1.36.0
Platform: Linux 5.0.9-arch1-1-ARCH x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Build Info:
    Build date: Nov 12 2019 18:12:47
    wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 2.24
    Boost: 1.69.0
    OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
    Curl: 7.64.1
    Compiler: GCC 8.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
    KICAD_SPICE=ON
    KICAD_STDLIB_DEBUG=OFF
    KICAD_STDLIB_LIGHT_DEBUG=OFF
    KICAD_SANITIZE=OFF

[Victor W (vicw)]

Hi,

Using the latest version of pcbnew, we're still seeing substantial issues generating drill map files. I'm going to separate comments and attach pictures for each of the export options.

The attached screen shot shows what the drill map looks like when generating a pdf or ps output. I've redacted some of the output in blue, but the pdf file has the following defects:

1) The size of the page is substantially smaller than the board, which means that the entire pdf can not be fit in. This makes the pdf drill map unusable.

2) The drill legend overlaps some of the board, and is cut off. This makes the pdf drill map unusable.

3) The drill legend has insufficient precision and incorrectly rounds to the second decimal place. This makes it very challenging to communicate to the board house special operations that need to be done on some of the vias based on hole size.

In particular, we use the third decimal place to communicate which vias should be back drilled, as suggested in this issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1842984 so not having this information makes it really hard to communicate this information to the board house.

===

What needs to be fixed for pdf/ps drill map exporting:

1) The size of the pdf needs to be scaled to include the entire design.

2) The location of the drill map legend should either be on a separate page, and scaled to fit within the page.

3) The precision of the mm drill map should be increased to three decimal places.

===

Application: Pcbnew
Version: (5.99.0-398-g3be1862b0), release build
Libraries:
    wxWidgets 3.0.4
    libcurl/7.64.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1b zlib/1.2.11 libidn2/2.1.1 libpsl/0.20.2 (+libidn2/2.1.1) libssh2/1.8.1 nghttp2/1.36.0
Platform: Linux 5.0.9-arch1-1-ARCH x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK
Build Info:
    Build date: Nov 20 2019 18:09:13
    wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 2.24
    Boost: 1.69.0
    OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.9.1
    Curl: 7.64.1
    Compiler: GCC 8.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
    KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=OFF
    KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
    BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
    KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
    KICAD_SPICE=ON

[Victor W (vicw)]

This is a comment directed to the drill map issues found when trying to export as an SVG.

The attached file is a screen shot of how the resulting svg looks like. It has the following defects:

1) Not all holes are actually present. This is a major defect making svg export unusable. In the attached screen shot, you should be seeing a tremendously larger number of holes - it's the same region as the one in the pdf/ps screen shot. But instead of seeing all the holes, you're only seeing 1 of the via hole sizes listed.

2) The drill map legend is on top of the art work.

3) The drill map legend rounds to 2 decimal places for mm.

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/1763