Editing KiCad Pad Stack

[Rene_Poschl]

The open ventilator project used a nightly build. In nightlies there is already support for pad-stacks. This topic is about the current stable version. And at this point in time even in the GUI so no more need to edit the footprint with a text editor.

[eelik]

@Rene_Poschl

In nightlies there is already support for pad-stacks.

But not in the sense used here, for full control of pads. It supports only turning the pad on/off for layers in a limited way. It doesn’t help if non-identical pads are needed.

[ferdymercury]

No, in the open ventilator project, we used KiCad stable 5.1.6 or 5.1.7.

We just used python scripting for editing the footprint text files so as to create custom padstacks.

[paulvdh]

I’ve tweaked the PCB a little bit and it’s now free of DRC errors.
The majority of the errors was because of thwo THT pads stacked on top of each other, so I changed those to a THT pad and an SMT pad on the bottom.

The rest of the errors were mostly clearance violations, which I fixed by making some tracks a bit narrower.

I also noticed you have a netlist file in the project. This is deprecated. It’s quicker & easier to use: Eeschema / Tools / Update PCB from Schematic. This does basically the same, but you do not have to import the netlist manually in Pcbnew afterwards.

I also deleted the .step file. I did not feel like putting that 11MB file in the project, as you already have it and it can also be auto generated.

I did modify some footprints in the PCB, and according to the schematic they are from some external library, so if you update the PCB you may loose them if you’re not careful.

2021-06-03_Tx-TB-Controller-1.zip (96.8 KB)

[abbeyWigan]

It appears we have convergence. It is as eelik said earlier. I applied his solution, as you have, and got the same result as you. Thanks for your contribution.

[cal-linux]

@paulvdh

With the default settings KiCad won’t even let you make these errors, which means you’ve disabled this in the interactive router settings

Well, strictly speaking, that conclusion doesn’t really follow. You can manually move (with Ctrl-M or M) traces or vias or in general any element to DRC-violating configurations. I guess with copy-n-paste you can also accomplish it.

I’m not disagreeing with your main points — at the risk of being tagged as judgemental as well, I completely agree with your points, and I hope the OP improves his technical skills to the point of understanding that your advice is actually valuable and right on the money.

Cheers!