DRC is an essential part of reducing mistakes on PCB layouts, but the DipTrace DRC has certain flaws that make it very frustrating in a wide variety of circumstances.
Here is an example. This is a USB-C connector, perhaps the world's most common connector. A USB-C SS connector has five differential pairs, which have their own unique requirements for keepout, clearance, width, etc. With DRC enabled, I have a lot of trouble seeing the design with all the red circles in the way. Sometimes, the only way for me to proceed is to either partially or completely disable DRC, which can lead to disaster. Please overhaul DRC so that there are fewer situations where I need to turn it off to proceed.
Things that would be helpful:
- Let me place a "keep-out" box where the DRC rules are different or disabled only inside the keep-out box
- Make DRC warnings more subtle or make them so they can be hidden or dismissed or moved out of the way like a leader in a CAD drawing
- If there are over 100 errors within one square centimeter, please find some way to display compound errors with fewer or just one visual indicator
- Let me hide certain individual errors so I can do my layout and then later look at a list of only the errors that were hidden.
- If there is an error, let me click the circle for an explanation. I don't think there is a way to see an explanation for an error without scrolling through the error list manually searching for the one you are looking for.
- Let me mark individual errors as "This is not an error, stop showing it to me." This could work exactly like hiding ratlines for one net. There are certain items like cuttable solder jumper pads, through-board female pin header receptacles, or the USB-C connector that will always have errors shown by DRC just by the nature of the item.
- Separate warnings from errors. For example, diff pair spacing from other nets will always be violated when the pair terminates at a connector or integrated circuit. Even though you can disable it for pads on a single component, the trace coming out of the pad and the neighboring traces do not get errors disabled. A differential pair being too close to other copper would go better into a warning category than an error category.
There are many improvements that could improve the usability of DRC to make certain types of designs less frustrating.