paper rocks

Close, but off: the dots are in a list (apertures, integrated with the regular gerbers in version 274X that everyone uses), and can be all sorts of shapes, which are then flashed or scanned. So you get square pads, circular pads, rounded-end traces, etc.

Polys can be primitives in the gerber (though I'm not sure how they're implemented, or if that's a proprietary recognition for some packages), or assembled out of traces.

Usually, when a poly is built out of traces, the trace size is set by a property in the original primitive: trace width, or grid size, or something like that.

PADS's poly system is archaic and terrible. End of story. :-(

The best I've used is actually Ultiboard, which redraws them automatically, and redraws faster than Altium*, even (let alone dinosaurs like PADS). It still fails real-time speed when there's lots of holes, though.

*Altium's last retool of their poly repour system is tolerable, but comparable or subpar. I tend to not use auto-repour. (To be fair, it is more advanced than Ultiboard's, so the extra wait might be rationalized that way.) Supposedly they've optimized it again in AD18, which should be nice.

Most other tools control this from pour order (determined by "bring to front" options, or a manager dialog or something like that), or with design rules.

I didn't think PADS's design rule system was all that handy, either. But the whole thing is made to prevent new users from understanding it; you probably understand its functionality better.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

We've been using PADS since the DOS days, and done a lot of boards. It's stable, and we can open 25-year old designs with no problems. Everything (including library parts) can be exported and imported in ASCII, which is very useful. We generate FPGA schematic symbols from the vendor data sheets, with a bit of Python. On an 800-ball FPGA, that saves a lot of time and mistakes.

It does allow pour prioritization, but I don't use that. It has a lot of features (as does, say, Word) that are more trouble than just doing things yourself. Today's problem is to undo the unintended consequences of unnecessarily assigning group properties to some DDR3 nets that screwed up power pours on the PCB. Grrrrrr. That's not a PADS problem, it's a people problem.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Altium's support of older competitor formats is reasonable. They may've made updates since I last had to do that stuff.

They have pre-cooked libraries for most every newish IC, at least of the most common ones like Altera and Xilinx.

They aren't pretty, but they are functional. You'd love 'em. ;-)

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

John Larkin wrote on 6/11/2017 2:34 PM:

That is simply not correct in the general case. RS-274X Gerber format has been in use for almost two decades with a command for defining copper pours as an outline Region Mode (G36/G37). The resolution of the resulting pour is limited only by the imaging device.

You are looking at the limitations of your software, not the RS-274X format. You need to get better software.

--

Rick C

nah, use the opposite type of film (negative film vs positive film)

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This email has not been checked by half-arsed antivirus software

The video was somewhat reminiscent of the game "portal 2" which is texture mapped 3d models for the most part, (the player's avatar is pre-rendered)

- this video has lots of pipes and stuff at 34 minutes.

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This email has not been checked by half-arsed antivirus software

Chromakey?

We burned onto blueline or sepia paper, on a flat table with a UV light overhead. One could make nice multilayer fadeouts by shuffling mylar layers during the exposure. It was labor intensive, maybe 10:1 or so compared to modern CAD. But PC layout is still labor intensive.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

There's an enormous amount of detail here:

so there's no simple expression. The Gerber files get to be enormous when you do a lot of fine-resolution pours.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Dang, that's mid 2000s tech -- get with the times!

Real time graphics in 2016 are nearly photo-realistic, the more subtle aspects being the only thing lacking (like soft edges and shadows in creased regions, or the perennial problem of animating realistic humanoid faces and gestures, and syncing them with dialog). It's difficult to convey just how much complexity they are able to turn out in real time, on a modest ($200, say) video card.

SolidWorks tends to bog down on something like that; it might run at 10 FPS, but that's absolutely usable for real CAD work. And you can always hide bits you're not working on at the moment.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

A SolidWorks 3D model can be spun around or zoomed in the viewer with no perceptible delay or artifacts, even on a middling Dell PC.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Well, doesn't mean much without a size reference... but that's been my experience with most viewers, and Altium itself (3D PCB view), for boards with, say, a thousand parts on 'em, and the hardware is just a workstation laptop with unremarkable graphics.

A full product can go pretty slow. Full enclosure, multiple boards (including components, because the PCB designer was nice enough to include every single resistor in the STEP file ;) ), every single mounting bracket, every single screw (screws are complex geometry, lots of curved surfaces -- usually approximated with tons of triangles), etc. Hundreds of assemblies, each with tens to hundreds of parts. Models this big are in the gigs file size.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

You are using obsolete software that doesn't know how to create an area pour. The zig-zag method of using overlapping lines to create an area pour is deprecated and some fabricators won't accept such designs because of the issues in verifying them.

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Rick C

He can't help it, that's what PADS does.

You aren't wrong about "obsolete"... :-)

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

Tim Williams wrote on 6/14/2017 9:27 PM:

Is that the sort of thing you pay "maintenance" fees for, updating the software to current standards?

--

Rick C

Nah -- you pay a maintenance fee for the priviledge of owning a dongle that allows you to use the software you already paid for (assuming you get the LMutils shit to behave, which is rare). If you want current version, that's extra (though not much extra IIRC, so you're better off updating).

Altium has a buy-once model, plus "subscription" updates. Eagle used to be the same I think (and with free use for certain limitations), but under AutoDesk, is now subscription-only. Most other cheaper ones are simple (buy once, at whatever level you want), and probably the higher tier ones are mostly subscription and NDA things...

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

Or just use Open Source, no strings attached.

--
Reinhardt

Tim Williams wrote on 6/15/2017 4:22 AM:

So does PADS still fill areas with a snake trace? I can see why the files would become huge!

Actually, even the zig zag snake trace is a poor way to deal with area pours. It could be done much more effectively by starting with a very thin outline trace that defines the outer perimeter. Added to this would be another outline trace with a wider aperture just slightly overlapping the first trace. Lather, rinse, repeat. This would allow a lot smaller file size and no need to trade off resolution.

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Rick C

Den torsdag den 15. juni 2017 kl. 17.48.58 UTC+2 skrev rickman:

what is your definition of huge?

but why bother?