Hi,
I’ve noticed that I cannot draw a straight line with tangent curves without ending the one element and starting another element with the curve or circle tool. The result is, that KiCad doesn’t recognize the combination as a single entity—even if the lines and curves join to form a closed figure.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to combine elements in this way. I would like to suggest this capability in a future KiCad release.
KiCad is quite limited in mechanical CAD capabilities.
You can drag endpoints of arcs and snap them to the end points of lines. Drawing PCB’s with rounded corners is quite doable within KiCad if you plan a bit ahead and can keep your coordinates on some sensible grid. (for example 0.5mm).
If your PCB outlines are more complicated, it is best to draw them in some other mechanical CAD program, and then import them as either .SVG or .DXF into KiCad.
Oh, I guess I didn’t explain sufficiently…
Even if you draw a closed figure with multiple elements, KiCad doesn’t consider it to be a single entity, and even if one selects all elements of the figure you can’t execute operations such as coloring the interior or changing the outline color. So, you can color a rectangle, or a circle but you cannot color a slot with rounded ends.
Is this for a schematic symbol, PCB or a footprint?
But indeed, this is a weak point of KiCad. Fancy graphics are not a high priority. The PCB Editor has a “graphic polygon” you may be able to do something with. Imports can have Bezier curves embedded (which are somewhat edititable) but there is no GUI interface to add them in KiCad, and there are some limited abilties with pictures and bitmaps. Maybe the Project Manager / Image Converter tool is of use to you.
The thread title says it’s for a symbol . . . the footprint editor would probably allow you to do this.
I don’t know which version you have, but in the nightly development version (which will be 8.0 in half a year or so), there is the option to “create polygon from selection” (of for example multiple straight lines connected together to form an enclosed shape). It might or might not do what you need, but it came to mind when I read your suggestions.
Perhaps this can be of interest too:
Schematic symbols, in fact.
Schematic symbols.
So, it is possible to import outlines created in other drawing packages…but you have to do that at the command line???
OK, that would be useful, to “merge” multiple elements into a single figure. But I am guessing, from what you’ve written, that arcs would not be suitable for inclusion…
Schematic symbols are graphically the simplest things in KiCad. It’s pretty much just lines and filled rectangles. But still it’s possible to make an 74ls00 with a round nose that is filled.
You can load it in the symbol editor and take it apart to see how it’s made.
Ah ha! I see now…the graphic doesn’t actually need to be closed, to be filled. That is counterintuitive, of course, so I didn’t look for that behavior and try to join two “open” entities that were “filled”.
Thanks, Paul, your suggestion is in fact quite helpful.
M
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