Tab Offset

[rowanfr]

It would be beneficial to device manufacturers like myself if their could be an offset variable in the json file for tabs type: fixed. This would likely be broken down into hoffset and voffset for horizontal and vertical offsets respectively.

The reason for this is that often times their are unique shapes to the boards which are not rectangular in order to fit into limited space. This can lead to, for example, a tetris T shape PCB to fit into a robotic torso. In such a case, having the tabs aligned to the center would break the PCB, while having an offset is a very simple way to fix a great many number of problems for panalization.

The difficulties of this (outside of implementation) would likely be with altering the way vcuts are done in a more restrictive way. The reason why I think this is that after trying to get something close to what I wanted, I discovered a few things using a PCB made up of only Edge.Cuts included here:
ExampleToPanelize.zip

1. Tabs do not accept an hwidth or vwidth of 0mm. The error An error occurred: float divmod() is thrown. Trying to reduce this to nearly nothing still leaves a small trace in between.
   Example1.zip
2. The more complex boards seem to cause failures with vcuts , typically throwing the error An error occurred: Cannot perform V-Cut which is not horizontal or vertical, but this only occurs when tabs are included as a variable. When tabs are removed completely a scaffolding of sorts is built, and vcuts actively cut more than what is desired. This is what indicated that the vcuts with an offset would likely be difficult to solve, as it already struggles with complex boards without that.
   Example2.zip

Implementing this would be a wonderfully useful feature even if the v-cuts aren't adapted with it (as those can be done manually very quickly), but I can already see how for full automation of panalization for more complex PCB layouts the method that v-cuts are implemented would likely have to change to make it less error prone. Overall though the addition of hoffset and voffset as options to the fixed type of tabs would greatly expand the capabilities of using KiKit for more unique PCBs.

[rowanfr]

My apologies as I just saw issue #166. This seems to solve my problem so this discussion can be closed.