Designing a Printed Circuit Board

[ericnickel]

I'm having what I hope is a very simple problem.  I'm designing a PCB that is basically a rectangle w four holes close to the corners.  When I color fill the board, the holes are colored, not the board.  How do I fill the board and not the holes?

Thanks

[Lazur]

Hi.

Select the circles and add them together (Ctrl++), then select both the rectangle and the holes and suptract them (Ctrl+-).
That "should" do it.

Another option (I'd prefer) is combining all together (Ctrl+K) which won't resample the subpaths as the boolean operations, but then the rendered visuals might need to reverse some of the subpaths depending on the fill rule.

[ericnickel]

Lazur thanks for the suggestion but after doing what you recommended in the first part of your post the hole are deleted. 

As for the second half of your post, boolean and subpaths etc, those are terms I'm just not familiar with yet.  Remember I'm just learing Inkscape.

I've included the file I'm working with just in case  you wanted to try yourself.

Thanks

[Lazur]

Oh that attachment clears things up.

First, your objects are grouped -select all (Ctrl+A), ungroup objects (Ctrl+Shift+G).
The board contours are built up of four separate paths. The rectangle tool would draw that in one go.
More than that, the four paths have 2 nodes and two segments in between as a closed path.
Bit complicated to describe step by step how to delete one of the segments and then combine all four together and join nodes...
Easier to suggest redrawing it with the rectangle tool, snapping its handles to cusp nodes.

The seemingly four circles are 6 -the bottom right is three circles atop eachother. Delete two of those, then combine the remaining four.
Subtracting it from a rectangle below would work then -keep in mind the top object is subtracted from the one below; to change the z-ordering use PgUp/PgDown/Home/End.

[ericnickel]

Thanks very much for your help.  I've been opening the same file over and over which probably created the multiple layers.  I agree, at this point I need to start over LOL.

How did you know I had all those layers?

Thanks again!!

[Lazur]

Keep an eye to the bottom line -there is an indication at the screen of the selectd objects/nodes.
It told right away about the group of 10 objects while only 5 would have been enough.
Selected the board's edges with the node tool, it wrote 4 nodes instead of 2.