AFIAK, Kicad is generating 2 drill files when using NPTH and regular pads: xyz.drl and xyz-NPTH.drl.
OSH Park, a board house, is capable of processing NPTH’s next to regular pads, but they request all the drill holes in one and the same file (mix of NTPH and regular pads).
Is there a way to accomplish this in Kicad?
Actually, in the other open source PCB CAD program, gEDA. The gerber program from that, GerbV, allows you to import multiple drill files and then export a single one. This is what Laen of OSHPark told me to do and it worked just fine the last time I did it.
Newer revisions have this taken care of, can’t remember in which one the feature was added, but it looks like this:
If you decide to switch take precautions, files saved since rev. 4958 can’t be opened with lower revs. this is because a lot of changes were made to the file format, take a look: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad/product/revision/4958
Cheers!
Ah, that’s why I didn’t see that option. I’m still using version 2013-07-07 BZR 4022 of KiCAD on Windows (XP) and that version doesn’t contain yet the option to merge those files.
Time to move on to a newer version, I’m afraid…
Thanks for pointing me out!
Ok, that’s another option to solve my issue, since I’m apparently working with a KiCAD version on Windows that doesn’t support yet that feature.
Will have a look at it (but then on Linux… 
), tnx!
It revision number 4732.
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad/product/revision/4732
In the mean time, I was able to build a very recent KiCAD version (BZR 5054) on my Windows machine following the KiCAD WinBuilder approach and saw the extra option.
This checkbox is missing in 4.0.0RC2. Was it removed intentionally?
I used to use this check box. A quick search of the commit logs, It was reverted out recently due to compatibility issues with gerber standards.
So my work around is just to use PTH with a drill size equal to the pad size.
@arantius @JoeChen
this has been discussed recently at:
unfortunately the merge option has been removed for a cleaner policy, but it seems it will be reintroduced because of users common needs…
anyway, the bug at the moment is still unassigned…
so dropping a comment there
It is back with revision 6317.
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad/product/revision/6317
