Create pad with selected shapes

[marc1996]

Hello everyone,

I was doing a pad that has a shape that is not possible to create (or atleast Idk how) with the options of the pad editor.

The pad has this shape:

I did it doing the out-line and then filling it with a pad and the parts that were empty with normal lanes.
After filling all the box, I click on create a pad with selected shapes ( I have the software in Spanish but I suppose that the option is called like that or similar).

That’s the result I get after doing the pad with shapes:

There are empty spaces (which are not a problem because I can fill them again and repeat the creation of the pad with selected shapes) but, the arc does not looks as an arc anymore.

Could someone explain me if there is any way to solve that?

Thanks!

[Rene_Poschl]

Use a polygon to draw your shape instead of using lines. (a polygon is filled. Every other primitive is not)

[maui]

You can use StepUp to design your pad in FreeCAD shaped as you need and let StepUp export it to your footprint

fp-test.FCStd (4.4 KB)
fp-test.kicad_mod (1.4 KB)

[marc1996]

@Rene_Poschl

Use a polygon to draw your shape instead of using lines. (a polygon is filled. Every other primitive is not)

But with a polygon I can not do an arc like the one I want right? And if I place this pad would it look like the arc one or the “polygonal” ?

@maui

You can use StepUp to design your pad in FreeCAD shaped as you need and let StepUp export it to your footprint

fp-test.FCStd (4.4 KB)
fp-test.kicad_mod (1.4 KB)

I never used FreeCAD before (edit: tried once but just for curiosity). Does it requires a lot of time to learn how to use it?

[eelik]

@marc1996

But with a polygon I can not do an arc like the one I want right? And if I place this pad would it look like the arc one or the “polygonal” ?

If you draw an arc with KiCad and zoom very close you see that it’s not actually an arc but a bunch of straight segments. And that’s perfectly OK because the physical resolution of the pcb etching process isn’t 100% accurate. You can drag a polygon which looks good enough.

@marc1996

I never used FreeCAD before. Does it requires a lot of time to learn how to use it?

Does it ever require a lot of time to learn a new CAD program? If @maui tells which basic workbench (set of drawing tools) is used to draw that pad you can go for a tutorial in FreeCAD web pages and learn enough of it in one day, I guess.

[marc1996]

@eelik

@marc1996

But with a polygon I can not do an arc like the one I want right? And if I place this pad would it look like the arc one or the “polygonal” ?

If you draw an arc with KiCad and zoom very close you see that it’s not actually an arc but a bunch of straight segments. And that’s perfectly OK because the physical resolution of the pcb etching process isn’t 100% accurate. You can drag a polygon which looks good enough.

@marc1996

I never used FreeCAD before. Does it requires a lot of time to learn how to use it?

Does it ever require a lot of time to learn a new CAD program? If @maui tells which basic workbench (set of drawing tools) is used to draw that pad you can go for a tutorial in FreeCAD web pages and learn enough of it in one day, I guess.

I tried one time to learn freeCAD like half year ago or more, but it was kinda different of AutoCAD. Would be really good to still have AutoCAD but that’s not possible anymore. Let’s see what @maui says… :)!

[maui]

@marc1996

But with a polygon I can not do an arc like the one I want right? And if I place this pad would it look like the arc one or the “polygonal” ?

In KiCAD you need to apply this workaround… approximate an arc to a polyline to have a filled shape (as @Rene_Poschl said ‘Every other primitive is not’ closed)

@eelik

If @maui tells which basic workbench (set of drawing tools) is used to draw that pad you can go for a tutorial in FreeCAD web pages

Mainly you need some basis on the Sketcher Workbench (which is already included in FreeCAD) and StepUp Workbench (this can be installed through the menu ‘Tools’ ‘Addon manager’ of FreeCAD).

I already posted above a sample FreeCAD file (fp-test.FCStd) to handle this pad shape… so @marc1996 would need only to modify the included sketch and export the footprint to kicad using StepUp WB.
Have a look at kicadStepUp-cheat-sheet

[Rene_Poschl]

@maui

In KiCAD you need to apply this workaround… approximate an arc to a polyline to have a filled shape (as @Rene_Poschl said ‘Every other primitive is not’ closed)

Another option is to place a lot of arcs next to each other and fill the shape that way. i doubt that this is a nicer hack than placing a polygon.

[marc1996]

@Rene_Poschl

@maui

In KiCAD you need to apply this workaround… approximate an arc to a polyline to have a filled shape (as @Rene_Poschl said ‘Every other primitive is not’ closed)

Another option is to place a lot of arcs next to each other and fill the shape that way. i doubt that this is a nicer hack than placing a polygon.

Thats what I did:

First of all, after having the shape but not filled, I placed a rectangular pad in the rectangular space of the shape. Secondly, I went to the same point where my arc was drawn and I started to fill the 2nd space with arcs, each time with less radius till filling it.
Once all the shape was filled, I did a new pad using the rectangular and the arcs that were used to fill.
I thought that maybe this is being influenced by the dimensions of the pad because it is like 1,6mm * 0,3 approx.

EDIT: Thinking about it, what about not doing the Pad with all the elements? I can just have the rectangular pad and the other space filling the shape. The only problem I can see is in the PCB layout when doing the connections you wont have that much freedom in how to connect the trace to the pad. ( hope I’m not wrong…)