Solder Mask Layer

[Tony Radice]

Does anyone know a method of drawing objects (specifically, lines or
keepouts) on the Solder Mask Layer?

Thanks!

[DJ Delorie]

Not supported yet, sorry.

[Tony Radice]

OK. I would like to recommend this feature for the following reason: My
Board House tells me that soldermask extending to the end of the board
tends to peel after the scoring/routing process to separate boards. As a
result, they recommend a 15 mil or so clearance at the edge of the
boards.

Post by DJ Delorie
Not supported yet, sorry.

[DJ Delorie]

It's recommended for *lots* of reasons, but until someone (me) has
time to work on it, it just won't get done. I've done some hacks that
look for layers named "cmask" or "paste" and just appends those to the
gerbers, but nothing that can be committed.

[Dave N6NZ]

Post by DJ Delorie
I've done some hacks that
look for layers named "cmask" or "paste" and just appends those to the
gerbers, but nothing that can be committed.

For those of us less familiar with the code, what is the internal design of pcb that forces you to do that? Are paste and mask layers not carried along at design time, but only created by output hids? (he speculates.... having only looked at the code enough to do tiny local patches).

My reason for asking is that I would like to dig on a moderate-sized patch to add more capabilities w.r.t. paste layer handling.

-dave

[Anthony Shanks]

Polygon keepout would also be nice too.

Post by Dave N6NZ

  I've done some hacks that
look for layers named "cmask" or "paste" and just appends those to the
gerbers, but nothing that can be committed.

For those of us less familiar with the code, what is the internal design of pcb that forces you to do that? Are paste and mask layers not carried along at design time, but only created by output hids? (he speculates.... having only looked at the code enough to do tiny local patches).
My reason for asking is that I would like to dig on a moderate-sized patch to add more capabilities w.r.t. paste layer handling.
-dave
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[DJ Delorie]

Post by Dave N6NZ
For those of us less familiar with the code, what is the internal
design of pcb that forces you to do that? Are paste and mask layers
not carried along at design time, but only created by output hids?
(he speculates.... having only looked at the code enough to do tiny
local patches).

The internal design is that the *only* layers are the copper ones,
plus a special exception for the two silk layers. No paste, no mask,
no outline, etc.

One of the LF tasks was to add a layer type tag to each layer to
identify if it was copper, mask, paste, silk, or outline, and if the
drawings were positive or negative (i.e. anti-copper to cut up a
polygon on another layer).

[Dave N6NZ]

Post by DJ Delorie
One of the LF tasks

LF?

[DJ Delorie]

Linux Fund. We wrote up a bunch of "big ticket" things that we wanted
to do.