Via Stitching v4.0.0

Full Changelog: v3.0.3...v4.0.0

Via Stitching v3.0.3

What's Changed

• Add Chinese, and stop requiring copper on both ends of a through via by @xiaomaitangjiang in #14

New Contributors

• @xiaomaitangjiang made their first contribution in #14

Full Changelog: v3.0.2...v3.0.3

Via Stitching v3.0.2

Full Changelog: v3.0.1...v3.0.2

Via Stitching v3.0.1

Full Changelog: v3.0.0...v3.0.1

Via Stitching v3.0.0

Full Changelog: v2.1.0...v3.0.0

v2.1.0

Inline via-type advisory (no more blocking popup) and remembered dialog settings with a Reset button. Fixes #11.

v2.0.0

Through, micro, blind, and buried via support.

• Via Type: Through, Micro, Blind, Buried, or Blind/Buried. Start/End Layer
  are free for every type except Through (always F.Cu/B.Cu); a non-standard
  combination for the chosen type prompts you to confirm rather than
  blocking it outright.
• Select an existing via first to pre-fill the dialog with its type, layers,
  net, diameter, and drill.
• X/Y offset, for stitching more than one via pattern onto the same net and
  area (for example a separate front-side and back-side microvia pass)
  without them landing on top of each other.
• Layer color swatches in the layer pickers, matching your KiCad color theme.
• Existing via/pad drill keepouts, and now also tracks, zones, and rule
  areas, are scoped to the layers a via actually spans, instead of always
  assuming a through via.

Thanks to @leoheck for the bulk of this work in #8, and for testing it hard
enough to catch two real bugs (a layer-span keepout gap and an X/Y offset
that silently undercounted one edge of the grid) that are fixed here too.

v1.1.0

Stitching vias no longer land on other nets' tracks

A through via drills through every copper layer, not just the ones your net happens to be poured on. The plugin only ever looked at the poured layers, so on a 4-layer board a via could end up sitting right on top of another net's signal track two layers down. That's a straight DRC violation, so the check is always on: tracks and arcs, every copper layer.

Thanks @monkey265 for spotting it and for the fix in #4.

Clearance now comes from your netclasses

No more single fixed margin. The plugin reads the clearance of both nets involved and takes the larger one, same way KiCad resolves it. One catch: a netclass that just inherits the board minimum reports nothing over the IPC API, so those fall back to 0.2 mm.

Two new keepouts, both off by default

Avoid other nets' zones. Keeps vias out of other nets' filled copper. It's off by default because it isn't actually an error, KiCad just clears the fill back around the via on refill. Tick it if you'd rather leave an inner power plane unperforated. Fair warning, you'll get far fewer vias, since that plane probably covers most of the board.

Avoid footprints. No vias under component bodies. This one is about mechanical fit rather than clearance. Off by default, because a thermal via array under a QFN or BGA ground pad is exactly what stitching is for.

Both have tooltips if you forget which does what.

Smaller fixes

• A rule area that forbids vias was ignored completely, so a keepout you drew over a mounting hole or an antenna got stitched straight through. Vias stay out of it now, on every copper layer, whichever layers you drew it on.
• Hole keepouts were sized off the drill's X dimension only, so a 0.3 x 3.0 mm mounting slot got treated like a 0.3 mm hole and a via could sit on the far end of it.
• A netclass with an explicit 0 mm clearance was read as having none at all.
• Typing nan into a dialog field got past validation and blew up with a raw Python error.
• Starting a new run while the previous zone refill was still going claimed no board was open. It now says KiCad is busy, wait a moment.
• The grouping error no longer blames your KiCad version. That was never the cause.
• Keepouts sit behind a spatial index now instead of being merged. On a board with 8000 track segments that stage went from 7.7 s to 0.6 s, identical results.

Install

Through the Plugin and Content Manager once this version is listed, or download the zip below and use Tools > Plugin and Content Manager > Install from File.

v1.0.2

• Group vias with create_items instead of the interactive group
  action, which could drop placed vias out of view. #3
• Drop cross-process window ownership on Windows; it crashed in
  rare cases. Dialogs stay on top via wx.STAY_ON_TOP instead. #3
• Raise the API timeout from 2s to 30s and drop the
  rollback-after-commit path that hid real errors
• Verify success against the board instead of assuming vias landed
• Fix keepout sizing to use drill radius instead of copper radius
  (was ~55% too large)
• Add offline geometry tests

v1.0.1

Fixes via grouping on KiCad 10 (vias are now actually grouped), macOS dialog window behavior and pins protobuf to fix venv import error on Linux. Thanks to @zhixuan2333 for the macOS fix.