"Decorative" traces from text?

[Andrei-Alechin]

Is it possible to use text items on a copper layer as a sort of “decorative” trace, as in starting at a normal pad/pin, connect letters together with something like hidden/buried vias+back layer traces, then finish at a normal pad/pin at the other end?

[eelik]

I don’t think so, and I wonder why would someone want that, because you can simply draw a straight track from under the text. If you want tracks to be visually connected to the text in the front side, draw some extra segments from each side of the text and accept the DRC errors.

[mf_ibfeew]

Is it possible to use text items on a copper layer as a sort of “decorative” trace

on principle yes - but:

• this will produce much drc-errors
• the connection with the graphic items is not recognized as a regular connection and therefore marked as “unrouted” till the end
• you get no help in deciding if the connection is really complete from start-pad to end-pad
• as all graphic-items are not recognized as real tracks (instead they are treated as isolated objects) you have to use the routing-mode “Highlight collisions” with option “allow drc-violations” enabled. Or don’t use tracks at all and draw only graphic lines on the copper layer.
• the standard Kicad-Font uses separate letters, so you have to draw little copper-segments connecting each letter to the next
• the last point can be improved if you import a connected text-item from a graphics-package (inkscape, corel draw) where each letter already connects to the next letter
• in summary: kicad is not intended for this task, but you can abuse it to achieve your goal

edit/addition:
kicad v6.0.x only supports the standard Kicad vector-font. this font itself is not very suited for decorative text items.
If you want to play with such things/tasks, you may try the v6.99 nightly development version (I don’t recommended it for production-use currently). With v6.99 you can at least use all truetype-fonts for decorative traces.

[Andrei-Alechin]

Gave that a go and yeah it’s pretty much just annoying, I’ll probably skip it here. I was mostly thinking aloud

[paulvdh]

Using PCB’s to make art-full designs is not really exceptional.

I do not myself in that direction, but a short test confirms that you can:

1. Import .DXF vector graphics.
2. Create a copper zone from vectors of the imported graphics. (And thus also assign a net).

You may have to experiment a bit with the grouping / ungrouping. I recommend to first use a simple test experiment to get some experience with the workflow before you do a “real” project.