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Editing/Deleting Geometry objects

therisod
Wed, 11 Feb 2015 09:27:28 GMT

Hi JP, thank youmonce more for all the work you did and the new features you added to FlatFam. I did try the new feature that allow the editing of the geometry objects but I haven't been able to achieve my goal. In brief. I have a PCB with a solid ground plane and FlatCam generates the isolation routing also for the PCB outline. Since I will cut away the PCB outside the pored GND plane I won't need those external isolation traces. I then tried to get rid of them using the new editor features but when selecting the external trace also some of the traces whitin the PCB (that I need) are selected and deleted as well. (See picture [Isolation Editor](//muut.com/u/flatcam/s2/:flatcam:Imqj:isolationeditor.jpg.jpg) ) (I need the traces around the plus sign to be routed) Is there a way to break the geometries in to pieces and delete only the pieces I don't need? P.S. I have been able to delete the outside traces using the 'Cut Path' tool but, it isn't documented in the manual and it isn't very clear how it works. I believe I have been lucky in getting it to do what I wanted...

jpcaram
Fri, 13 Feb 2015 21:05:24 GMT

Hi Stefano, Yes, I've been working more on the code than the docs these days. To break geometry into pieces: Select the geometry object that you would like to break apart and click "Cut Path". The "Cut Path" also works with a **target** and multiple **tools**. When you select multiple objects, the first is the target and all the rest at the tools. The tools subtract from the target but braking apart the target first. This is, if the target is a polygon (closed path) it will extract the boundary of the polygon as a line and the subtract from it. As opposed to the "Polygon Subtraction" tool which cuts area away from the target. I will probably add this to the manual soon. Hope it helped. JP

janray
Fri, 29 May 2015 11:08:21 GMT

Hello JP, FlatCAM has been great so far and I wanted to try making custom board cutouts. I tried editing geometries using squares and polygons for making custom board cutouts. What I did was load a gerber file containing the shape of the custom cutout and generated the initial geometries. It was when I tried cutting gaps in the generated outline that I did not succeed the first few times as I could not draw the shapes likes rectangles and circles. It took a while of pressing the Ctrl, Shift, and Alt keys when I accidentally pressed the Spacebar key. It was then that I was able to insert new geometry. Is this a bug or should this be in the manual?

jpcaram
Fri, 05 Jun 2015 18:40:35 GMT

Could you please describe the exact sequence of events?

janray
Sat, 06 Jun 2015 02:34:43 GMT

Sure! Here it is. 1.) I followed the tutorial detailed here: http://caram.cl/software/flatcam/board-cutout-with-flatcam/. 2.) When I reached Step 3, I couldn't draw rectangles or any shape. This is where I was wondering if I should perform key combinations for this step to work. This was where I realized that I should press the Spacebar key before I could draw anything. 3.) After this, I followed the rest of the tutorial without any problems.

jpcaram
Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:27:42 GMT

I can't reproduce the problem. I can draw right away. If I remember well, the spacebar key is used to finalize a task. For example, when drawing a polygon, use the spacebar to set the last point. There are no other uses of this key in the program. On what OS is this happening? I assume it's on FlatCAM 8.3 or the latest from source? JP

janray
Thu, 11 Jun 2015 08:33:50 GMT

That's strange. I was using FlatCAM 8.3 on Windows 8.1.

jpcaram
Wed, 17 Jun 2015 13:41:35 GMT

I have never tried Windows 8.1 though. Maybe it's OS specific.