Problem with hatched pour violating clearance setting

Hi Charles. Unfortunately your linked image is not displaying. A couple of ideas - increase the clearance of the polygon to ensure >1mm; use a solid pour close to the buttons and hatch to fill the remainder; are the touch areas pads - if so check if using arcs or octagons to draw around pads.

I'm using arcs - I tried octagons, and have the same problem.

In that case might be worth trying to increase the clearance by half the line width of the hatch.

In that case might be worth trying to increase the clearance by half the line width of the hatch.

The weird thing is if I use a solid pour, there are no problems. It's clearly an issue with hatched pours.

I just tried your suggestion about increasing the clearance width----- it didn't work.

Did the clearance change? If not then are you adjusting the correct clearance or do you have multiple rules and the wrong one is taking priority. From memory it is possible the hatched pours may draw the outline along the boundary and hence be 1/2 the line width closer than expected.

Yes, the clearance changed as expected. The problems I am seeing are greater than just 1/2 the line width. I just tried adding a keepout around one of the pads, repoured the hatch and the hatch went crazy - much of the hatch around that pad was missing or incomplete. Hopefully you can see the image. The problem is on every pad, some worse or better than others.(the image is of the hatch problem, not the attempt with the keepout!)

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Thanks for sharing the image. If you would like me to take a look at the design tomorrow please feel free to zip up the PCB and send through to software@element14.com.

That would be great thanks - it could be an operator error...:-) I'll send it to you shortly

Hi Charles. Many thanks for sending through the design - I have investigated and it appears the polygon clearance of the hatching is influenced by the clearance design rules for SMD Pad to Arc and Track and not just the polygon rules. If you adjust the values to 1mm the rogue hatching goes away.

Thank you fro reviewing my files. This work-around caused other problems however. First, the 1mm clearance violations now occur around the vias, see the image below. Next, this has caused number design rule violations around my connector, since the spacing between the connector pads is 1mm, running any trace in between becomes a violation. The settings also mean that I cannot have different clearances around my sensor pads and the traces that connect to them, which is not what I want.

I modified the settings as follows, and fixed the DRC errors around the connector, but the via issues remain. (I'm not using any SMD pads, so I did not change those values)

And a final one for this morning! Not sure how this can happen, but the clearance around the through hole pads on the connector is different on different pads.