Removing boundaries from Zone (feature request?)

[Riaan_Ferreira]

Hi so it seems that when you draw a Zone in proteus, you are forced to have a finite width for the boundary.

So below illustrates the problem. If I for example draw a 1x1mm square the square will always be bigger than what I want.

1x1mm_square.PNG (60.5 KiB) Viewed 3575 times

So it is possible to make the boundary thickness smaller by defining a custom line thickness, although there is a minimum width of 1th.

Zero width error.PNG (14.24 KiB) Viewed 3575 times

The same thing happens when you create copper pours from DXF files. The traces will always be thicker than what you designed for. Is there any way around this? If not, I would like to request this be added as a feature for future versions (Not sure how to do that?).

Thank you in advance

[David]

Hi Riaan,

Unfortunately you cannot have a 0th boundary. The copper is drawn by a machine that uses a 'pen' and like a pencil, you need some lead in order to draw, so you can have a 1th leaded pencil but if it was 0th then it wouldn't draw. 1th is the smallest possible.

Regards,
Dave.

[Riaan_Ferreira]

Hi David

Thank you for the reply. I think I understand the dilemma. Would it be possible to add a feature that allows the border (of finite width) to be drawn on the inside of the shape, so that the overall size it correct? Maybe a tick box on the edit zone window?

So currently when I'm drawing a shape I have to manually adjust the size. For example for a 1x1mm square I have to draw a slightly smaller to accommodate the linewidth.

The BIG problem comes in when I'm importing DXFs (for RF and Antenna PCBs) this manual adjustment becomes extremely tedious due to the complexity of the shape. Keep in mind since for the cases where the transmission line is very thin (0.2-0.5mm) the impedance can be significantly different the 1th linewidth is added to it.

We really hope there would be a solution to this in the future.

Kind Regards Riaan

[Iain]

I've logged a ticket for developer attention. If you could e-mail us one of the problem DXF's so we can reproduce that would be really helpful (support @ labcenter.com).

Thanks,
Iain.