Hatch Copper Pour

[Docara]

HI
Just finishing a CAPSense project and my first ‘proper’ project with KiCAD. Is a hatched copper pour function hidden somewhere - I know Kicad was updated and menus have moved perhaps somethinf was missed

Thanks

[Rene_Poschl]

Not available in the current stable version but will be available in the next release (Will take a while till that one will be released. I would guess it is probably still about one or two years). You can play with it in the current development snapshots but read this first: Is it a good idea to use a nightly build version?

[Docara]

Oh! OK I just assumed Kicad would have had it already - thank you for the reply and clarification.

[der.ule]

KiCad doesn’t have per default, but take a look here:

Copper pour with Hatched fill instead of solid fill

Hi! My first post here! I’m one of the “victims” of the videos Chris released some time ago. Got into KiCad and i guess i’ll stick with it, as it’s getting better and better in time. In my last board design i also wanted to use a few capsense buttons and encountered the problem of generating hatched zones. I used the free version of Diptrace to generate them. Apparently, despite the pin number limit in the free version you can still import a gerber layout and use an automatic pad detection, even…

With a little script you can do wonders

[RRPollack]

If you’re wanting to create a cap-sense “button” and need to place several of them, look into the custom footprint capabilities of KiCad. I’ve used this to create the interleaved fingers pattern needed for a conductive pad keyboard.

[Docara]

Nice! will do.

Question why the fingers? The data sheets I’ve read all state a full copper fill for the pad with hatched copper fill surrounding them

[RRPollack]

My custom button is designed for a conductive pill key oard, not capacitive sensing. I posted it only to show the sort of thing you could create using custom footprints in KiCad.

[Docara]

Ah! my mistake
I was thinking of implementing them with a circle graphic on a copper layer, but an actual footprint has merit .

Thank you for your input

[paulvdh]

Also, these wizards for custom footprints typically consist of only a few pages of Python script. If you want to make some custom Footprints, similar, but not quite like those available in the wizards, then it is very doable to (copy and) edit the Python scripts for one of those wizards.
You can get access to these wizards from the Footprint Editor, and then create a new footprint (From scratch or with the Wizard, the Wizard Icon has a yellow star).