Constrain connection to front or back layer

Layout
1

I mill boards fairly often. By nature of isolation milling holes are not electrically connected front to back. Because of the way the headers connect they will only be connected to one side (front or back). As a result when I design I try to hold in my head which connections are constrained to the front, and which are constrained to the back. This is a lot to “memorize” as I do the layout. Does anybody know if Design Rules or some other method can indicate in the software that this constraint exists? – and not let you make connections you won’t ultimately be able to solder.

I think it’d be really cool to illustrate this in the rats-nest by showing lines starting and finishing as either red or green to indicate which side you will actually be able to solder to. I may try to implement this feature, time allowing.

Cheers,
Nate

2

To put it bluntly - you need some means to tell you which side of a PCB the actual header connector is placed on.

Sounds like you want/need custom footprints, with some more information - or different information, than what is in the KiCAD libs.

3

To some extent I answered my own question:

In “Footprint Editor” --> “Pad Properties” (press “e” on a pad), then you can specify which layer the pad belongs to. “All copper layers” shows up yellow. You can change to front or back and the color changes to red or green.

Still think it’d be fun to implement the color gradient in rats nest =P