[sdiy] [OT] LM13700 spotted in commercial product of big Manufacturer

[Pete Hartman]

On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 10:39 AM jslee via Synth-diy <
synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 19 May 2022, at 19:11, Gordonjcp wrote:
> > On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 06:55:11PM +1000, jslee via Synth-diy wrote:
> >> I was recently looking at Kicad again, wondering if it might finally be
> >> feasible to implement an equivalent of my front-panel generation
> >> software, and was astonished to find that it simply doesn't have an
> >> equivalent of Eagle's DRU or CAM files. None. At all.
> >>
> >
> > What do those files do?
>
> DRU: contains design rules. PCB fabs like Seeed, OSHPark, etc often
> provide this for Eagle users, but they're also easy to create from a fab's
> documentation. You load it and run DRC and it tells you if you've violated
> that particular fab's rules.
>

Perhaps there is no 'DRU File' with the format you expect, but it
absolutely has design rules that can be updated to reflect your fab and I'm
quite certain they can be made persistent (more commentary below).

This was my first hit for KiCad Design Rules, and I'm sure there is more
information in the official documentation as well.
https://www.protoexpress.com/blog/how-to-set-up-design-rules-kicad/



> CAM: contains (a) a list of output files for a CAM process, and (b)
> mappings of design layers those output files, possibly with some settings
> like "create a negative image". Fabs often provide this for Eagle users,
> and of course they can be created easily enough. I tend to end up
> customizing CAM files to add layers into the silkscreen outputs, but other
> than that I use it as-is.
>

How does this differ from Gerber files?  This is an honest question, not
trying to be snarky....


> You might have multiple versions of these even for a single fab if you
> design boards with varying layer stackups.
>
> In both cases, the files tend to encode details peculiar to a fab's
> process, and if you get them wrong (in any PCB software) you're potentially
> going to have a bad time. Hence my comments about human error. I would much
> rather load two files than manually configure Eagle (or Kicad, or ...)
> every time.
>

I'm very certain that the design rules can be set up in a way that doesn't
have to be manual every time.  Personally, I don't get to that level of
DRC, the defaults seem to work just fine for my fab of choice, but
everything in KiCad is some form of text file, and the formats are not hard
to suss out.  I have on occasion converted Eagle projects to KiCad, and had
reason to want to make some global changes from how the default import does
things -- I've simply opened the files in vi and done global
search/replaces.  If I were doing this regularly I would write a script to
automate it, that might take me an afternoon.

While they certainly won't match one-to-one with what Eagle has/how Eagle
does it, I'm pretty certain KiCad has the same capabilities.  I've
installed a handful of plugins that do fairly sophisticated things (my
favorite takes your layout and generates an interactive HTML file with the
BOM and an image of the boards that highlights where parts are when you
select them).

Thanks

Pete
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