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Bouni / kicad-jlcpcb-tools

Plugin to generate BOM + CPL files for JLCPCB, assigning LCSC part numbers directly from the plugin, query the JLCPCB parts database, lookup datasheets and much more.
MIT License
1.14k stars 103 forks source link

Feature Request: Export Additional Layers #525

Open lilindian16 opened 1 month ago

lilindian16 commented 1 month ago

I am in the process of developing flex PCBs. JLC requires a dedicated layer for outlining the Stainless Steel stiffener with the specs included in the zipped gerber. My current work-around is to draw the details on the User.Comments layer and then edit kicad-jlcpcb-tools/fabircation.py by adding ("Stiffener", Cmts_User, "Stainless Steel Stiffener") to the plot_plan_top list in the _generate_geber(self, layercount=None) function. This exports the User.Comments layer as the Stiffener layer.

It would be good to have the option to include additional layers for fabrication file generation in this toolchain. That way we can keep a dedicated and named layer in the editor that we can also easily export - something like a tick-box with the default exported layers already selected. Kicad includes this feature in the built-in gerber exporter

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Bouni commented 3 weeks ago

I see your point but strugle to see how we could easily include that so that the normal user does not get affected. I don't want to replicate the exporter settings of KiCAD as the whole point of the plugin is that you can press export and get what JLC needs.

Maybe we could add a setting "export User layers" which then exports all user layers into the gebrer zip. For sure there are to many in there for your use case but you could still delete the not need ones from the zip.

Do you have a better idea than that?