niconiconi17h ago
One of the most annoying things in #electronics: you can run a trace under a 0603 resistor, but you can't do that under a 0603 capacitor. The IPC footprints are slightly different, taking the height of the capacitor body into account.
Show threadcpresser

@niconiconi Works with a 0.25mm trace, but 10mil won't fit.

Revenge of the metric system :)

Slightly related: I was involved in re-generating the RLC footprints a few years ago. We did try to follow IPC as close as possible.

Jun 15 at 2:41pmWeb
Show threadniconiconi16h ago
@cccpresser PCBs are still sold by mils, with a 10 mil/10 mil board being the de-facto cheap class. This is one of the other headaches in electronics: metric feature sizes are always slightly smaller than the imperial feature sizes. If the board design is metric, you're forced to move one step up in the pricing hierarchy, because your metric features exceed the imperial minimal by a few micrometers! In this case, the 0.25 mm trace is under the 10 mil minimum by being 4 micrometers too short!
Show threadsconient10h ago
@niconiconi What are the manufacturing tolerances? Would shrinking the cap pad sizes by 2 microns really make a difference?
Show threadRyan5h ago
@niconiconi @cccpresser had no idea about the diff between mils and metric. I figured if you kept to the manufacturers stated feature size, everything would be ok.