This is a question of custom shape pad

Hello
I want to make oval shape pad.
But custom shape menu only arc.
Can I make a pad like cad picture?

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The good news is: Yes KiCad can work with pads shaped like your sketch. The bad news: There is no easy way to create them from within KiCad.

If you need that hard corner then you will need to use a polygon as the custom pad primitive. (meaning you will need to approximate the arch with line segments) There is no way to tell KiCad to do this approximation for you. (Meaning drawing by hand. Not really feasible.) Best option is to use freecad to generate such a pad for you: Kicad StepUp: The Sketcher for Footprint generation


If you can live with a rounded corner then you can use arcs and lines as primitives. For that draw your arcs and lines (overlapping by at least 0.1mm) on any layer using the normal graphical tools of kicad. Add a circular pad somewhere inside that area. Select the pad and all your graphical primitives -> right click -> make pad from selected shapes. (or similar wording i work from memory here)

I agree with Rene that the custom drawing facilities integrated in KiCad are pretty limited. Learning to work with FreeCAD & Stepup is quite a steep learning curve.

I do not agree with this however:

This is how I would approximate an arc with a polygon:
1). Draw an arc on the F.Silkscreen layer in the Footprint Editor. The arc is just a guide for coordinates and will not be a part of the footprint polygon.

2). You can either approximate your arc coodinates on a fine grid, or select the arc and press ‘e’ for edit and enter some calculated values:
image

3). Select another layer to draw the footprint polygon. This is not really needed for simple stuff, but for more complicated footprints it may be usefull to be able to turn the “helper layer” on / off during editing. You can also use different colors then. Here I selected the Dwg.User layer:
image

4). Use the Polygon tool and a grid to your liking to select a few points on th arc:


5). Place a pad somewhere on your Polygon. This determines the “anchor point” to which tracks wil get connected. I used a simple small round SMD pad.
image

6). Hide your “helper layer” (here F.SilkS).
7). Draw a big box around all objects of your custom pad.
8). Right Mouse button and: “Create Pad from Selected Shapes”.
image

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Thank you!!!
Good!!!

Hi,
I’m a bit late but as @Rene_Poschl suggested I took the time to play with your fp




and the files:
fp-arc.FCStd (9.8 KB)
fp-arc.kicad_mod (4.4 KB)

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