I want some pads to be gold plated, but I’m struggling to find how?
This has to be arranged with the fab. There are considerations and procedures, it’s not something you can just specify in the gerbers,
Search for “pcb gold plating fingers” for some typical articles on how it’s done.
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If you mean gold plating for the entire board, then you don’t have to do anything in your PCB design, this is a surface finish selection option when you order PCBs. It’s called “Immersion Gold” or “ENIG” at most manufacturers. This is pretty standard, it’s used for a large proportion of boards being manufactured today.
If you need harder gold plating, such as on PCB edge connectors that will be plugged in and out many times, or boards where the pads need to be impact-resistant (pogo pin target pads for continuous use for example) then you will need to communicate with the manufacturer about how they want them specified. There are, as retiredfeline said, called “gold fingers”. Usually the manufacturer will need an additional gerber layer (you can use one of the user layers for this and select to include it when plotting) with the pads that need hard gold plating indicated. Some manufacturers offer hard hold plating for the entire board too. If your boards are not very big this may be a better option than gold fingers. In that case, again, you don’t need to do anything in your design, but you need to tell the manufacturer that’s the surface option you want.
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