I’m creating a footprint/module for a standard SD card holder/connector. The pads have many different pitches, the drawing sometimes give dimensions to pad centers, sometimes to pad edges, and sometimes to the component center line. Are there tools available so I don’t have to constantly calculate the proper pad center placement on a calculator risking errors inherent in that process? I come from Diptrace which at least had measurement and dimensioning tools that could snap to pin centers, edges, corners, etc.
you may have a look here
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There are workflows for creating footprints documented in postscript/pdf documentation, such as the following, which involves conversion using gEDA PCB, and a few other tools:
http://www.penguin.cz/~utx/pstoedit-pcb/
Importing a resulting gEDA PCB format footprint can be done either from within Kicad, or exported from a version of gEDA PCB supporting Kicad format export, such as the pcb-rnd fork of gEDA pcb:
http://repo.hu/projects/pcb-rnd/
If you can find an existing footprint, perhaps in BXL or Eagle format, it can be converted with tools such as
which again, can then be imported into Kicad fairly easily.
Good luck!!
Erich.
You could also try QEDA for fp creation. Opinions about how it should be have already been linked by @maui 
Or check this one out, works for the push-push ones you can get from ebay and was made after the FCI_SDcard_10067847 datasheet:
Conn_SDcard.kicad_mod (4.5 KB)
Though, I have to admit I had some trouble reflowing (cold, non contact on SCK & CMD I/O pin, were later found during check why the SD card didn’t work), but maybe this was because the pads where right on the edge of the pcb when I put paste on (all else on that 160x100 board came out fine). So be warned.
PS: yeah, their dimensioning and placement is a bitch to get right
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I really like the idea here. If it gets a little more developed, I would certainly use it.
I actually created a nice footprint on FreeCAD with the Draft tools, but I couldn’t find any way of importing the DXF into KiCAD to the pin layer. I finally cut my losses and used my calculator.
What do you mean by pin layer?
Recently I made an enclosure outline for front panel according some .pdf in Inscape -> dxf -> KiCAD
http://blog.luftek.si/2016/09/inkscape-dxf-kicad.html
More clearly stated, I couldn’t create pins out of my imported shapes. One DXF importer I’ve used in the past gives the option of importing filled shapes as pins.