TCL command isolate handles -overlap as percentage rather than as fraction

[Oliver]

Hello,

the TCL command "isolate" is taking the value for -overlap as a percentage value rather than a factor is suggested by the description:

[-overlap <float>: Fraction of tool diameter to overlap passes.]

Running the following command in the TCL window:

isolate kicad_test_1-CuBottom.gbr -dia 0.1 -passes 5 -overlap 0.25 -combine 1

generates paths with the following distances:

1. first pass is 0.05mm away from the edge of the copper track (= half of the diameter) -> correct
2. second and higer passes have a distance of 0.0997mm from pass 1 and between each other.

0.0997mm is the best which I can measure using the GUI, it is very close to the 0.09975mm resulting from an overlap of 0.25%.
The expected distance is 0.075mm = (1-0.25)*diameter.
When running the above command with "-overlap 25" the result is exactly this, 0.075mm.

(Gerber test file is attached.)

Affected versions:
Beta 8.991 and 8.99

With versions 8.98 and earlier the resulat was as expected, "-overlap 0.25" was giving a distance of 0.075mm with "-dia 0.1".
The problem was introduced in Beta 8.99.

Thanks + regards
Oliver

[Marius Stanciu]

Hi Oliver,
Yes, in recent versions I made the transition for the Overlap parameter from factor to percentage because I feel it is more intuitive this way. I will correct the description for that parameter to reflect the new behavior.

[Marius Stanciu]

Try the latest commit, it should use the percentage correctly. I fixed the Paint and NCC Tool to use the percentage, too.

[Oliver]

Hi Marius,

I was wondering if this was a intended change or a regression introduced by other changes.

I have checked the last commit (cb18043321be) and it’s working fine. The help message now reads:

[-overlap <float>: Percentage of tool diameter to overlap passes. [0%, 99.9999%]

To get a 25% overlap the parameter needs to be set to “-overlap 25”. This is like before, but the message text is now matching the actual behaviour.

The only side effect from changing the semantics is of course:
Anybody who is using the “isolate” TCL command in scripts will see almost no overlap from now on. That’s probably worth a warning somewhere in the release notes.

From my point of view, you can set the status to ‘resolved’.

Thanks + regards
Oliver

[Marius Stanciu]

Solved in latest commit to Beta branch.