Print Footprint with Anchor into PDF

[osterchrisi]

I am trying to print a PDF of my board outline including footprints in a PDF. That works great. Now I saw the option “Print according to objects tab of appearance manager”. That actually seems to do what I expect it to do, e.g. with THT pads or values.

But printing Anchors doesn’t work. Is there any other setting I need to look at to make the Anchors printable?

I use the “File / Print…” dialog, select my options and then after clicking “Print” I “Print into File”. I use Ubuntu 22.04 and KiCad 7.0.8.

Thanks!

[eelik]

I think they can’t be printed, they are not actual design elements.

[osterchrisi]

Okay. So, if I understand correctly, there is simply no way to print the anchors then. And the “Print according to objects tab of appearance manager” option only affects printable elements. And the anchors aren’t actually printable.

Is that correct?

[eelik]

That’s what I think, but I’m not 100% sure. It’s a logical conclusion if you can’t print anchors, grid etc.

[osterchrisi]

Makes sense. I tried to print the grid as well and it didn’t print either. So that would confirm the theory.

[paulvdh]

I was thinking if it was a reasonable feature request to have options to print grid and anchors, but I don’t know what practical use it has to print these. What do you gain by printing these?

As a workaround, you can always make screenshots.

[osterchrisi]

Tbh, I don’t have a use case for printing the grid either, I just tried to see what of the objects tab’s selections works.

I tried to use the anchors because we had issues with a 3D model. It’s great that KiCad can export .step models but if we’re not sure about the 3D model itself being correct (might be downloaded or maybe create too quickly), the silkscreen + anchor is a nice fallback.

I guess the general use case is mechanical design of enclosures, panels and such between programs where it’s handy to have the anchor of a footprint silkscreen.