Advice on thermal clearance

[Gadjet0]

Hi,
I have a GND plane that connects to a component pad but due to it’s position only one thermal connection is connecting on one side. To beef up the ground connection on ejust this one component I just added a track from the pad that was wider than the thermal relief track, this track has no end connection as it will just be part of the ground plane.
I then have to make an exception in the DRC to ignore the unconnected track error, is this OK or is there a better way to do it?

[mf_ibfeew]

I then have to make an exception in the DRC to ignore the unconnected track error, is this OK?

It’s ok. I do this mostly also. Additionally I spend an GND-Via at the end of this single track, but near the thermal pad of the footprint. This enhances thermal and Gnd-performance and as a side-effect deletes the drc-warning about “unconnected track end”.

or is there a better way to do it?

There are more ways, for instance you could try:

• place an additional little gnd-zone above the thermal pad. This additional zone must have a higher priority and the pad-connection-setting set to “solid”
• change pad-settings from the footprint/Pad in question: doubleclick only the pad → get pad-properties dialog → go to second pane “Clearance overrides and settings” (normally not used pane) → set Pad connection from “From Parent Footprint” → “Solid”
  Note: depending on your workflow this is a little dangerous → the next “update Footprint”-action clears this setting and sets it back to the footprint-library-value.