- So far not 1 fine pitch (ie .5 mm pitch) footprint works on KiCad 5.1.12. This includes footprints that came with the KiCad libraries and footprints that from the Digikey library
- Every footprint initially shows an enormous pad clearance area that overlaps with the other pads causing DRC errors in spite of the fact that all of these pads show a pad clearance of 0.0 in the Local Clearance and Settings. You can change the clearance to ie. .1 mm and then avoid the DRC errors, but you can still not connect a trace to these pads. The tracks end midway at the solder mask skirt and will go no further.
- Before moving on the the solder mask layer for the pads… note that once you have change the Pad Clearance to .1mm, and observed the new perimeters in Pcbnew, you can then go back where you were in the Local Clearance and Settings and set the Pad clearance to 0, and it will actually be 0, which is really what you want. Recall that earlier, before you started, that parameter was set to 0 to begin with but the actual result was a huge pad clearance, so large that it completely overlapped the adjacent pad clearances.
- Changing the pad solder mask clearance to 0 (from .05 mm in this case) (counting on some other unknown mask setup to somehow take care of the needed masking) does not fix the issue. The tracks will still not traverse the space that used to be midway in the solder mask skirt (area beyond the pad). Maybe it is a coincidence that the track stops there. I don’t know. Note that I am talking about connections established in the netlist with appropriate flying wires resulting. And no level of fine grid enables the ability for the track to actually reach the pad.
- Why not just go to KiCAD 7 and see if it works there?
a) My computer at work is Windows 7.
b) Microsoft went nuts a few years back and started demanding that all software be rented and not purchased if it will run on Windows 10. Sort of… or something like that.
c) Microsoft’s user agreement for Windows 10 is high density legalese that nobody should sign (though I might be thinking of their latest Office package agreement).
d) Windows 10 takes over your computer regarding updates and other functions like Hal in “2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY”, and they have not worked out a way of ensuring you that it is Microsoft that is taking control rather than someone with ill intent.
e) KiCAD beyond version 5 uses FreeCAD. The FreeCAD user agreement is not clear about whether you can use it professionally for free because it references a long list of components that it uses and says you are bound by all of their user agreements. And those components likely have similar provisions that collectively assure that somebody is going to have access to your work and have legal rights to it. If that sounds nuts, let me ask you: Do you know anybody that uses Google Drive for storing professional work? Read the agreement for Google Drive.
SO IS THERE A FORUM for KiCAD 5.xxx Users or is this it?