I have recently upgraded to V 5.0 after my machine died, and I can see a lot of improvements…one error, or “feature” that has changed though is that with the new PCB router, I cannot route around a pad when the bottom/inner copper layer is of a different size to the top. It always tries to route around the largest TOP part regardless of what layer the track is on. After a couple of hours I noticed there was a “legacy” toolset, and with this turned on all was good - although I’s prefer to use the new one. Hopefully this is correct place for reporting this, if not please free to re-educate me.
Could you send us the layout showing the issue?
Regards,
Tom
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Merit_J_Die_PH.kicad_mod (1.4 KB)
HEre is the footprint - you should see that the top pad is bigger than the bottom, but can’t route around the bottom pad as it follows the top!
Define the top pad as smd pad in this case. (but remove the paste layer from it)
As inspiration look at the section about thermal vias in the how to make a footprint tutorial.
But if I do that, I don’t get a drill hole…
Yes you do. The smaller pad should be the tht pad which defines the drill. The larger one is only for adding copper to that particular layer. (We use this all the time for thermal vias in the official library)
Thats what I did, but it doesn’t look correct in the 3D viewer - the top copper goes straight across covering the hole - are you saying this will not cause an issue with the manufacturer, or am I not doing it correctly?
How should a manufacturer drill through the pcb but still leave copper there?
You might also want to take a look at this: Why are holes covered with copper in the 3d viewer?
Also a default smd pad would include paste. This is rendered in the 3d viewer as an additional layer above copper. For this part remove the paste tickmark from the pad definition. (Like i already mentioned above)
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The 3D viewer is not intended to be exact from the electrical point of view. It is mostly for mechanical export.
The real electrical files are the gerber ones.
OK, thankyou, I will do the modification, and double check the Gerber files.
Not even for that. The kicad 3d viewer is only there to make nice looking pictures. For mechanical export you need to switch over to the step export (or kicad stepup extension of freecad)
I noticed there was a STEP export - will try that also.
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