Hi everyone,
since i couldn’t find any relative info, i thought i should open a new topic. I believe this is the right place for this.
I think it would have helped a lot a feature in which you can calculate appropriate vias or pads(according to standards) from datasheet values for correct footprint configuration.
I would love every feedback about this.
Thank you for your time.
Actually, the appropriate place for the final ask is in the bug tracker on gitlab. The devs use the same mechanism to track bugs as they do for features. See this FAQ:
But what this forum area is useful is a sounding board among us users to help develop a feature request from an idea with ad-hock jargon to a proposal with KiCad and/or industry standard jargon.
For example, what I think you are asking is for an IPC (the standard that @Rene_Poschl and his library team strive to follow) calculator interface. (Sorry, Rene, I forget the standard number and version off the top of my head…) Or maybe for one of the other competing standards?
I don’t know the legalities of publishing and freely distributing a footprint calculator based off of a standard that has to be purchased to read… I’m not a lawyer so I’m not even going to pretend to be one.
Thank you for your answer.
I just thought a feature like this can help a lot for correct footprint creation.
I do not know anything about legal issues. You are right about this. It is important.
There are some footprint wizards that are provided with KiCad. In the footprint editor see the “Create Footprint…” item in the File menu, or the 2nd toolbar icon from the left (looks like an IC with a star on it).
While they are mainly suitable for standard packages, one could use them for the pad/drill dimensions and then move the pads around to the correct position for a non-standard package.
There are a couple of IPC7351 wizards that are discussed here
You also might find the Qeda project of interest
https://qeda.org
Making use of the standard to code and distribute a calculator has not been a problem.
Copying or publishing extracts from the standard is not allowed
We librarians wrote standalone python tools for generating footprints from yaml input following IPC rules: https://github.com/pointhi/kicad-footprint-generator in particular
I originally planned to convert them into footprint wizards but the KiCad wizard interface is just not powerful enough to encode the possible combinations for imputing part dimensions properly (The script is written such that you will not find a datasheet that does not map directly to one of the options available as we don’t want contributors to manually calculate any dimension).
Thank you all for your input.
@John_Pateman i wasn’t aware of this. I will surely check it out
@Rene_Poschl this tool is great after all, since i fixed some python issues and managed to execute from the windows machine i currently use, i will definitly spend some more time with it.
Yesterday i found this: https://www.worthingtonassembly.com/blog/2019/2/18/determining-plated-thru-hole-sizes
and i think will help me a lot for custom packages for high power devices(bridges/igbt modules) but only with round holes.
For footprints like KBPC, with rectangular/oval pads/vias TH mostly, i haven’t managed to find something relative…
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