Importing external designs

It is often useful to import geometry from other tools or sources, such as Altium or KiCad. RayRF imports this geometry from PNG screenshots. It is not perfectly precise, since a low-resolution screenshot yields low-resolution geometry, but it works well in most cases.

The PNG import dialog opens from the Draw Tools panel.

Calibrate the scale

Pick a PNG file to start. Two steps then calibrate the import. First, move the pixel ruler over a feature whose real length you already know, such as the width of a patch in mm. Second, enter the real length of that ruler segment (in mm) on the right side of the dialog. After that, move on to the mask colour step.

Pick the mask colour

The mask colour picker works the same way as the Fill tool in a program like Paint. Click Pick Mask Color, then click somewhere on the image to sample that colour. Adjust the threshold if needed. The handles around the edges of the image crop out anything you do not want included. When the masked regions match what you want, click Import to finalise.

The masked regions now appear as a bitmap primitive on whichever layer you chose to import to.

You can change the scale later from the primitive properties panel without going through the whole reimport process.