First NixOS attempt: pip wheel PySide6 cannot load libgthread-2.0.so.0
because NixOS has no FHS library paths. Nothing inside the venv can
fix that (KiCad installs wheels only) - but the plugin made it worse
twice over:
- The backend probe imported bare PySide6, whose pure-Python __init__
succeeds even when QtCore's .so cannot load - so matplotlib was
promised QtAgg and the error figure died at switch_backend, taking
the failure report with it. The probe now imports <binding>.QtCore
and falls through to Tk/Agg on a broken Qt.
- The user got a raw ImportError traceback. A cannot-open-shared-object
failure during the kipy/dialog imports now raises a UserFacingError
that names the actual fixes: run KiCad in an FHS environment
(steam-run) or enable nix-ld with Qt runtime libraries. The README
Linux notes carry the same guidance.
141 passed on the dev stack and the Python 3.9 mac-equivalent stack.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
macOS is now field-tested and working; the README platform notes say
so instead of untested. Linux remains audited-only.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Second Mac run (KiCad demo board opened from the mounted installer
image) got past the dialog and died twice:
1. make_output_dir crashed with OSError 30: the demos volume is a
read-only filesystem. Now falls back to a temp directory named
after the board, with the path printed (the Messages panel showed
it is actually read there).
2. The error figure - and every other figure - could never render:
matplotlib refused with Cannot load backend TkAgg ... as qt is
currently running. macOS bundled Python ships tkinter, so the
old tk-first probe picked TkAgg while the PySide6 dialog and
progress window had already made this a Qt process. Windows never
saw it because KiCad Python there has no tkinter. Qt now comes
first - PySide6 is a hard dependency, so it is always there.
Both covered by tests that fail on the old code: the dev env has both
toolkits installed, so the backend-order assertion is exercised for
real, and the RO fallback is simulated by denying mkdir under the
board dir. 140 passed on the dev stack and on the Python 3.9 +
numpy 2.0 / scipy 1.13 / matplotlib 3.9 / PySide6 6.10 stack that a
Mac venv resolves.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The setup section and platform notes claimed all three OSes work; the
Linux and macOS statements come from a dependency/code audit only -
nobody has run the plugin there. Say so and ask for reports.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The README assumed Windows throughout. Setup now gives the interpreter
path, deploy command and venv location for Windows, macOS and Linux
(venv paths verified against KiCad 10 sources: GetUserCachePath +
python-environments), plus a Platform notes section: macOS bundles
Python 3.9.13 so pip resolves an older wheel stack (KiCad installs with
--only-binary :all:), and windows there may open behind KiCad; Linux
needs python3-venv on Debian/Ubuntu.
pyamg has never published Linux aarch64 wheels, and with KiCad's
wheels-only pip one unresolvable requirement kills the whole venv
build - so an environment marker skips pyamg there and the solver
falls back to Jacobi-CG, which it already supports.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Skin resistance is a small fraction of real AC impedance (proximity
and inductance dominate), so AC must not appear in the descriptions.
README headline, PCM/plugin metadata, pyproject, dialog note, CLI
help and the summary label now all say: skin-only lower bound on the
resistance rise, not an AC impedance simulation.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
It is a right-click context-menu item on the plugin row in
Preferences -> PCB Editor -> Action Plugins, not a control on the
Plugins page. Also document the manual venv-delete fallback.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
After a solve, the per-layer current-density maps can be pushed into
the open board as reference images on User.9..User.12 (stackup order,
top first) - visible right in the editor, toggled like any layer,
never plotted to gerbers. Dialog checkbox, default OFF; every push
replaces all reference images on those layers.
Rendering (fill_resistance/overlay.py, KiCad-free and tested headless):
one pixel per grid cell, opaque over copper with the log scale lifted
off the colormap's near-black bottom (dark canvas), transparent
elsewhere, one pixel of half-alpha edge bleed so the overlay reaches
the drawn outline instead of stopping half a cell short. Pushing lives
in board_io (ReferenceImage via the IPC API, KiCad >= 10.0.1; scale =
width / (pixels * 1 inch / 300 PPI), position = image center); kipy
0.7.1 swallows creation errors, so the per-item status is read from
the raw CreateItemsResponse. pipeline.run takes an optional overlay
callback; failures are reported, never fatal.
tools/kicad_overlay_test.py pushes a fiducial alignment pattern (KiCad
bbox readback verified placement to half a pixel); tools/
kicad_heatmap_overlay.py runs the whole thing headless against the
open board, filtering marker rectangles of other nets' analyses via
the exact copper test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The mouth of a populated THT pad kept only foil copper on every layer:
on the component side and inner layers the joint looked (and conducted)
like plain plane, and current had to crowd through the single barrel
attachment cell. The filled hole - lead cylinder plus solder bore - now
adds conduction-equivalent copper of the full hole depth on EVERY
spanned layer (the pin continues beyond both mouths, so each layer sees
the whole plug cross-section). Side to side the joint differs only by
the solder: coat and cone stay on the protrusion side.
Cone and plug contributions accumulate ADDITIVELY (stack.t_extra_nm)
and fold into thick_scale once; multiplying the factors would overstate
mouth cells carrying both. The raster map draws filled mouths in a
darker tin with their own legend entry.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The drill's y dimension was discarded (padstack.drill.diameter.x only),
so a milled slot became a round hole of its x size - contact rings,
drill mouths and lead cones painted circles larger than the oblong pad
itself, and the cone was skipped outright (pad_min <= drill).
Slots now keep their true stadium shape, rotated with the pad (KiCad
CCW, y down): Electrode/ViaLink carry the end-cap offset vector,
drill_nm becomes the slot WIDTH, and a shared slot_distance() reduces
to the plain radius for round holes. The barrel wall ring, mouth
coverage, cone taper and the solver's attachment search all follow the
slot; barrel_resistance uses the stadium perimeter and bore area. The
stitching-coat fallback becomes a capsule along the slot (inscribed
disc when the axis is unknown) instead of a largest-dimension disc.
Slot fields round-trip through the JSON dumps.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Pads are the junctions where traces and thermal-relief spokes actually
meet; without their copper a multi-track junction necks down to the
accidental overlap of the rounded track ends, or is severed outright.
gather_smd_pad_copper fetches the exact shape of every undrilled pad
on the net (one API call per pad, layer from the padstack) and
build_problem stamps them onto their own layer (INCLUDE_SMD_PADS).
Selected SMD-pad contacts get their real copper as a side effect
(previously electrode-shape intersected whatever lay underneath).
Dead-end pads become floating islands that the existing connectivity
restriction drops.
Closes the documented SMD-pad-copper limitation (prompted by the
padne comparison).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- pyproject.toml + uv.lock: uv-managed dev environment (uv sync /
uv run pytest). requirements.txt stays: KiCad builds the plugin's
runtime venv from it and the PCM zip packages it.
- README: em-dash and run-on cleanup (34 -> 22, the rest deliberate),
split the 120-word THT solder-joint sentence, fix the documented
ADAPTIVE_MAX_CELL_UM value (2 mm -> 1 mm, config has 1000 um), fix
the *Packaging / publishing* cross-reference, dev sections now use
uv sync / uv run.
- LLM disclaimer: "most commits" carry the trailer (32 of 39), figures
claim now excepts the hand-drawn hole cross-section, reference the
UT3513+ measured-vs-computed validation.
- .gitignore: local AI-tooling artifacts; deploy scripts exclude
pyproject.toml/uv.lock; error-figure title punctuation aligned with
the other window titles.
Real boards vs. a UT3513+ micro-ohm meter, agreement within +/-20%,
attributed to test-setup imperfections and manufacturing tolerances.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The overlaid contour lines belonged on the potential plot the plugin
already produces; demo-potential.png is that figure for the same demo
solve.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Shared contour levels across both layers, so line density reads as
field strength (the caption points at the notch carrying nearly the
whole drop).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
docs/img, embedded in the README with captions:
- demo-current / demo-raster: real pipeline output on a synthetic
two-layer net (soldered THT-pad contact, notched pour, stitching-via
field) showing the current-density map and the raster map with the
adaptive-mesh overlay and the one-sided solder coat
- contact-models: |J| around the same contact under the equipotential
and uniform-injection models (the bracket, with both R values)
- hole-model: hand-drawn cross-section of the four hole types (capped
via, open via, populated THT joint with lead/solder/cone/coat, DNP)
tools/gen_readme_figs.py regenerates all four; noted in Packaging.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- THT pad copper is now part of the conductor: the exact pad outline
(incl. oblong/custom shapes) is fetched from KiCad once per pad and
stamped onto every included layer (the outer shape stands in for
inner rings). Annular rings bridge antipads, and joints land on real
copper instead of only pour coverage.
- The internal lead conductor is modeled in every solder-filled hole:
a cylinder of drill - THT_LEAD_CLEARANCE_MM (0.25 fab rule) with
THT_LEAD_RHO_OHM_M (copper default; config for brass/steel leads),
in parallel with the solder annulus and the plating.
- Drill mouths of THT pads: populated pads keep conducting mouth
copper (stands in for the solder plug - conservative, the plug is
worth ~200 um of copper equivalent); DNP pad holes are cut open on
every layer like uncapped via mouths.
- Oblong pads: the coat uses the exact pad shape; the lead cone tapers
within the inscribed circle (new pad_min_nm on ViaLink/Electrode) so
the long axis is not overstated sideways.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The pad face is wetted where the joint is: the protrusion side,
opposite the component (already read from the owning footprint). The
component-side pad face stays bare - contact_solder_buildups and
tht_joint_buildups no longer coat both outer layers.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
No size-threshold guessing: whether a hole is a via or a THT pad
already comes from KiCad (board.get_vias vs drilled board.get_pads).
Every populated THT pad of the net now carries the complete joint the
contacts got: solder-filled barrel, average-thickness coat over a
pad-diameter disc on the outer layers, and the protruding-lead cone on
the side opposite its owning footprint. The footprint side and the
Do-not-populate flag are read from KiCad (footprint pads store absolute
positions, so owner lookup is an exact (x, y, number) map); DNP pads
stay plating-only with no joint. Contact pads are deduplicated by
barrel center so their cone/coat is never applied twice.
Barrels are now gathered in single-layer runs too: via rings and drill
mouths perforate a lone plane, THT joints stiffen it locally.
ViaLink gains solder_filled + protrusion_side (legacy dumps load with
the old every-THT-pad-filled semantics).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The clipped lead of a soldered THT contact protrudes
THT_LEAD_PROTRUSION_MM (1.5 mm default, 0 disables) out of the hole on
the side opposite the component, and a solder cone wraps it: full
protrusion height at the drill wall, tapering linearly to zero at the
pad edge. Painted as per-cell extra conduction-equivalent copper via
stack.thick_scale - the tall solder column at the wall pulls the joint
vicinity to lead potential (equivalent to extending the barrel wall
vertically), the taper carries the radial spreading. DC-exact additive
conductance; at f > 0 the factor multiplies the skin-corrected sheet
conductance like the via mouths (documented approximation).
The protrusion side is looked up from the owning footprint (pads store
absolute positions; component on F.Cu -> lead tents on B.Cu), with a
logged B.Cu fallback. Dump schema gains protrusion_side and
tht_protrusion_nm (defaults keep older v6 dumps loading).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Selected vias and through-hole pads inject at the drill-wall ring on
every spanned layer (both contact models), not the whole pad face,
so the pad/pour spreading resistance is part of the result. Vias are
now selectable as contacts.
- Soldered THT joints: the hole is modeled solder-filled (core in
parallel with the plating, also for stitching THT barrels) and the
pad face carries an average-thickness solder coat over the modeled
copper (SOLDER_THICKNESS_UM).
- Vias with drills above a configurable threshold (dialog field,
default CAP_MAX_DRILL_MM = 0.5) keep open mouths even with capping
selected - the fab caps only small vias.
- Geometry dump schema v6: electrode barrel fields, cap_max_drill_nm.
- Verified against R = rho/(pi t)*acosh(d/2a) for two circular contacts
on a sheet (+2.6% at h = 0.15 mm, a = 1 mm; uniform model above the
equipotential one as required by the contact bracket).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Follow the swarm-review fixes: chain cells display the true in-trace
current density, teardrop zones conduct, and AC current-density maps
are referenced to the skin-reduced equivalent thickness.
ADAPTIVE_CELLS defaults to True (dialog checkbox stays; untick or
--no-adaptive for the uniform reference grid). With the adaptive grid
the auto cell sizer targets TARGET_CELLS_ADAPTIVE (8M fine cells,
~2x finer h) since unknowns no longer scale with the fine cell count -
memory of the masks/field arrays is the new bound.
The test suite pins ADAPTIVE_CELLS off via an autouse conftest fixture:
the exact-value tests define the uniform reference grid; adaptive tests
opt in per test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two-point fluxes across coarse-fine faces miss the tangential potential
gradient (offset leaf centers), biasing R ~0.5-2% low. After the first
solve, per-leaf gradients are reconstructed by least squares over face
neighbors and the known tangential term g*delta*Gt moves to the
right-hand side of a re-solve (ADAPTIVE_CORRECTION_PASSES, default 1).
The matrix is unchanged, so the new PreparedSolver reuses the LU
factorization / AMG hierarchy across passes; the corrected currents
satisfy KCL exactly, so the power-balance identity, via currents and
part fluxes all use them consistently (edge power = dV * I_corr).
Measured: strip worst case -1.74% -> -0.028% (1 pass); feature-dense
plate end-to-end -1.1% -> -0.011% at 7.2 s vs 25.9 s uniform (5.58M ->
823k unknowns). Tests tightened accordingly plus a passes-knob test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
config.ADAPTIVE_CELLS (dialog checkbox "adaptive cells", off by
default; standalone --adaptive) routes run_solve through
fill_resistance/adaptive.py: per-layer balanced leaf grids where every
non-uniform fine cell (electrodes, 1D chain cells, buildup, via-mouth
thickness map) is pinned at the fine size, leaf faces via the
series-half-cell rule, chain links and barrels re-attached by node id,
connectivity restriction and both contact models on the leaf graph via
solver cores extracted for reuse (_equipotential_core, _uniform_core,
_conductance_params, _barrel_links). All fields (V, |J|, power density)
are computed per leaf and expanded to the fine grid, so plots, summary
and dumps are unchanged.
Element sizes: minimum = the grid cell size itself (auto / dialog /
CELL_UM_OVERRIDE); maximum = ADAPTIVE_MAX_CELL_UM (2 mm default);
ADAPTIVE_GUARD sets the clearance a block needs to grow.
Measured end-to-end (feature-dense 120x120 plate, h=50um): 25.9 s ->
5.4 s, 5.58M -> 823k unknowns, R -1.1%. Accuracy documented honestly:
coarse-fine interfaces carry a first-order tangential flux error
biasing R low by ~0.5-2% depending on geometry (worst on narrow
strips); the earlier assumption that linear fields solve exactly on the
leaf graph was wrong - offset centers across size transitions leave an
unpaired residue. Gradient-corrected interface fluxes remain as phase 4
if tighter accuracy per leaf is needed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Each via now contributes its ring/pad copper (full-thickness disc of
the pad diameter on every spanned layer) and its drill mouth: with
"vias filled + capped" (dialog checkbox, default on, VIAS_CAPPED) the
mouth carries a CAP_PLATING_UM (15 um) thin copper cap on the outer
layers and is an open hole on inner layers; unchecked, mouths are open
everywhere. Mouth coverage is area-weighted per cell (4x4
supersampling) through a per-cell thickness map feeding the existing
harmonic-mean face machinery, so sub-cell mouths perturb the sheet by
their true covered fraction instead of whole cells. Fully swallowed
cells leave the mask; the barrel then attaches through the ring via the
existing pad-footprint search. THT-pad copper and drills stay outside
the model. Ring discs paint before 1D trace chains (chains see them as
regular copper), mouths after wide tracks (drills go through trace
copper). standalone gains --uncapped.
Tests: cap==foil identity against the feature-off reference, strict
R(solid) < R(cap) < R(hole) ordering, ring bridging a fill gap that a
ringless barrel cannot cross, gentle sub-cell perturbation at coarse
grids, and JSON roundtrip of the new fields.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Layer-to-layer the cap (>=15 um plating per fab spec) is parallel to
the annular-ring contact, so it cannot change the DC path. In-plane the
model treats every via mouth as solid layer-thickness copper; the error
is bounded by the dilute-hole correction (~ +2x mouth-area-fraction
locally), partially offset by the unmodeled annular-ring copper, and
typically well under a few percent of total R.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Tracks are now first-class Problem objects (TrackSeg: centerline +
width, dump schema v5), so the wide/narrow decision replays at raster
time: traces at least TRACK_1D_FACTOR (3) cells wide rasterize from
their outline as before; narrower ones mark the cells their centerline
crosses as copper and connect them with explicit conductance links
carrying the trace's TRUE arc length per link - no staircase inflation
for diagonals or arcs, and no discretization error in the trace R, at
any grid size. Links across cells already joined by pour faces are
skipped (union, not sum); chain-only cells get no sheet faces (their
copper is narrower than a cell). Electrodes, via barrels, connectivity
restriction and the skin-effect scaling all work on chain cells
unchanged.
This removes the need to shrink the cell size for thin traces: a 0.2 mm
bridge at 500 um cells now matches its finely-rasterized ground truth
within a few percent (tested), including diagonal and arc traces.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Straight tracks become capsule outline polygons (rectangle +
semicircular caps), arc tracks annular bands with end caps, both
tessellated to the same sagitta tolerance as zone-fill arcs; they merge
into the per-layer copper next to the fills, so rasterization, via
stitching, the solver and the plots handle them unchanged. Trace-only
layers and trace-only nets now qualify as candidates. Dialog checkbox
(on by default, INCLUDE_TRACKS) toggles them per run.
Hole-less polygons (every track outline) now paint the layer mask
directly instead of allocating a full-frame temporary each.
Tests: exact N-cell chain on a rasterized capsule, analytic annular-
sector convergence for an arc trace, capsule/arc-band outline geometry
invariants, collinear-arc degradation, and fill+trace union solve.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Hybrid rasterizer: PIL scanline fill for the bulk, with cells in a
~2 px band around each ring edge re-tested exactly against the
polygon - cell-for-cell identical to the old center-in-polygon pass
(equivalence test added) but O(vertices + cells) instead of
O(vertices x cells). Measured 4.5 s -> 0.11 s at 1.45M cells with
8.8k polygon vertices.
- AMG-preconditioned CG (pyamg, new requirement) above 500k unknowns:
measured 7.0 s vs 15.3 s spsolve at 1.4M unknowns at a fraction of
the memory, R identical to 1e-6; the old Jacobi-CG (kept as fallback
when pyamg is missing) needed tens of minutes there. spsolve stays
the default below 500k where it is exact and fastest.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The intro predated the skin-effect feature; the AC capability was only
mentioned under Model & limits.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- LICENSE.txt (GPL-3.0-or-later), declared in the new PCM v2
metadata.json (validated against the official schema)
- tools/build_package.py builds the registry-layout addon zip in dist/
plus the submission metadata copy with sha256/sizes and a release
download_url derived from the Gitea homepage
- tools/deploy.py: symlink/copy deploy for Linux, macOS and Windows
- 64 px resources/icon.png for the PCM listing
- README: Linux setup/dev commands, packaging and license sections
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
DC/AC resistance, power dissipation, and via/injection-area currents of
copper zone fills. KiCad 10 IPC-API plugin (kicad-python/kipy):
multi-layer via-coupled FDM solver, multi-part terminals via User.1/User.2
marker layers, pads as contacts, uniform-injection and equipotential
contact models, per-foil skin effect, optional solder/copper buildup on
mask openings. 54-case test suite incl. exact analytic references.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
janik
grabowski