Via Stitching

[Hildo Guillardi Júnior]

One nice feature to EMI, high frequency layouts and power plane connection will be the via stitching. Some example of how this work is showed in the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1TIjxdZIoE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTAdAx02k94

[Frank Severinsen (shack)]

Could Via stitching perhaps be added as a copper zone type?
Here you already the net info, priority etc.

[Steven Slupsky (sslupsky)]

@shack I think that is a good idea. An option in the zone settings to turn on via stitching and specify the density and grid pattern. You would also have the ability to select which layers you want to stitch.

[Hildo Guillardi Júnior (hildogjr)]

Good! Some propose of configurations:
- Border distance (use the actual measurement unit);
- Distance between two vias (use the actual measurement unit);
- Type of the via, of couse;
- Layers to connect (shall we remove the restriction of just select one layer to the Copper Zone?);
- Hole via or blind/burred via (BOOLEAN);
- Allow diagonal or just H/V vias (BOOLEAN).

Explaining the last one:
Situation H/V:
. o o o o
. o o o o
. o o o o

Situation diagonal:
. o o o o
. o o o o
. o o o o

[Hildo Guillardi Júnior (hildogjr)]

The post removed the spaces, use the "ascii draw" above:

Situation H/V:
..o...o...o...o
..o...o...o...o
..o...o...o...o

Situation diagonal:
..o...o...o...o
....o...o...o...o
..o...o...o...o

[Heitor (heitorpbittencourt)]

That's a very nice idea! Currently I do that by hand and its very boring.

Another thing to have is an option to put vias around an object, instead of filling an entire plane. For example, select a track and stitch the vias only around it.

[Hildo Guillardi Júnior (hildogjr)]

This will be very interesting to high frequency layouts. Should allow even place around differential track (as unique object), not just a single track.

[Seth Hillbrand (sethh)]

This is on the v6 work plan.

Proposal here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jdag7AdnR5mmLypq8hhJ2fWHuQ15drSAEhkBaCyel70/edit?usp=sharing

[Cedric De Wijs (cedric12345)]

I would like to see a via stitching. I see however one little problem with this. If you have all the via's in a grid with identical spacing, then this forms a resonant structure. Adding a random (or a not-so random) offset per via tunes each segment of the two stitched ground planes to a different frequency, so the two ground planes are no longer able to resonate as a whole.

Does the above reasoning makes sense? can two planes of copper really create a resonant chamber?

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2082