This is an update from the folks doing Thunderscope (a high frequency "soft" oscilloscope) but this really stands out:
Teaching KiCad a New Trick - Matching Delays
At time of writing, KiCad only understands the length of traces and pins. When length matching, it takes length as a single number added up across every layer. This leads to delay mismatches, as the signals on the inner layers are slower than the signals on the outer layers. When assigning pin lengths, you need to arbitrarily choose a layer to convert a delay value (given by the manufacturer), to a length. This also results in delay mismatches.
I wanted to do this right, just like Altium does, but I didn’t want to have to calculate and add up all the delay values by hand in a spreadsheet. So I made a script to rewrite custom design rules to try to get KiCad’s length matching to be delay matching (including pad delays).
Closed source design tools leave you stuck, and often when a need like this surfaces you end up paying a lot of money for an "option pack" that adds the capability. If you have ever wondered if KiCad was up to doing any kind of design, this should assure you that no it works just fine and you can kick that $10,000 Altium license to the curb.
Teaching KiCad a New Trick - Matching Delays
At time of writing, KiCad only understands the length of traces and pins. When length matching, it takes length as a single number added up across every layer. This leads to delay mismatches, as the signals on the inner layers are slower than the signals on the outer layers. When assigning pin lengths, you need to arbitrarily choose a layer to convert a delay value (given by the manufacturer), to a length. This also results in delay mismatches.
I wanted to do this right, just like Altium does, but I didn’t want to have to calculate and add up all the delay values by hand in a spreadsheet. So I made a script to rewrite custom design rules to try to get KiCad’s length matching to be delay matching (including pad delays).
Closed source design tools leave you stuck, and often when a need like this surfaces you end up paying a lot of money for an "option pack" that adds the capability. If you have ever wondered if KiCad was up to doing any kind of design, this should assure you that no it works just fine and you can kick that $10,000 Altium license to the curb.