I want to create some through holes to solder wires. I can’t find symbol nor footprint for through holes.
I tried a Mounting hole with pad, they are very large.
I tried a via point with large inner diameter. but it doesn’t seem to expose too much copper for soldering.
What’s the right way to create a through hole for soldering? which symbol/footprint to use? Thanks!
I used Mounting hole with a pad for symbol and then chose a vertical pinhead for footprint, it seemed to work
There are also some “test point” schematic symbols and PCB footprints.
The testpoint footprint library has about 100 footprints, and they start with a drill diameter of 0.5mm, and there are versions with both square and round pads, (and also other shapes).
If wanting through-hole with Pads and Wire, attached is useful (or, could search for my tutorial on making jumper wires and make them as you want them)…
Footprints (.mod) and their referenced .wrl
Wire_Black_Single.kicad_mod (694 Bytes)
Wire_Red_Single.kicad_mod (667 Bytes)
Wire_Black.wrl (1.9 MB)
Wire_Red.wrl (481.8 KB)
Screenshots
See also How to connect a wire to the PCB?. You can find suggestions for through holes there. You should also learn how to copy a ready made footprint to your personal library and modify it, or how to create one from scratch. It’s the bread and butter of PCB design anyway.
In the Kicad footprints, look at “Connector_Pin” and also the various flavors of “Connector_PinHeader”. You’re bound to find something in the size you want for a single pin. And if it gives you a square pad and you want a round one, simply edit the pad in your PCB and change it to circular. You can also change the size of the hole and the size of the copper pad.
Hi,
if its just the size of the mounting holes you dont like, you can simply change the pad dimensions !? Its one of kicads wonderful liberties.
Hello Black Coffee,
I assume that you used Freecad for designing these wires, do you ?
If so, the two wrl files don’t have the same size although they seem to be issued from the same path. Strange !
I’m lazy and I like already made work ! Do you have the step files ?
Thanks in advance
He has shared them before:
Hope this helps
Thanks but they’re not exactly the same, the older ones are linear instead of randomly shaped.
It is better to use a turret tag to attach wires to a board, something like this
https://www.dem-uk.com/deltron-components/products/4mm_single_pole_connectors/other_electrical_connectors/356-0200.asp
I don’t know why they are at different scales on your end - both the Black and Red .wrl’s show the same “Scale” in the .mod file (screenshot below).
That is confirmed by opening them in a Viewer (screenshot), such as Paraview. They show overlaid and are identical.
You can change the scale in the Footprint Editor.
Yes, I did them in FreeCad. They are as shown. The Jumper Wires are curved. But, if you watch the Video on making them, well, you can make straight one’s…
[EDIT] Here’s a link to the video’s
Step Files attached below…
Wire_Red.step (227.1 KB)
Wire_Black.step (227.1 KB)
If wanting a Screw type post, attached. Also, a large Ring terminal (scale it as desired…)
Wire_Black_wTerminal.step (582.0 KB)
Wire_Black_wTerminal.wrl (2.0 MB)
ScrewTerminal_2.5.kicad_mod (544 Bytes)
Wire_Black_wTerminal.kicad_mod (842 Bytes)
Thanks a lot.
Perhaps the difference in the sizes comes from the parameters that are manually selected while exporting the job to step and VRML. As far as I understand, there’s no texture nor specific rendering in step files and this might impact the size of the wrl files. I’m always confused, a configuration box is really missing.
Take a mounting hole with pad and modify it to suit your size needs.
I agree it would be nice to have just plain pads, but then if you use them a lot you break the net list logic that drives low error rates
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