Is there a way of placing tracks or filled zones inside a footprint?
This would be useful for making footprint modules like PCB coils, antennas, any complex shape that’s effectively an on-PCB component.
I’m guessing not, as this seems like a pretty complex feature.
Yes, sort of. This question appears on the Forum every few months, so there are old threads to read if you can find them. (Unfortunately I can’t point you to any of the threads off the top of my head, and search terms like “pads” or “shapes” are too general. Searching for “overlap pads” might work.)
One useful feature in KiCAD’s footprints is that pads are permitted to overlap, as long as they have the SAME pin number. If there is enough overlap (I think one pad must overlap the center of the other pad), KiCAD treats them as electrically “connected” and will not squawk it in the DRC.
So you can build up moderately complex shapes using overlapping pads of various sizes and shapes. The SMT pads are especially useful; it seems unnatural to define a “pad” as being, say, 10 mils wide and 2500 mils long, but it’s a legal shape in KiCAD.
Some users have also reported good results by importing mechanical drawings into KiCAD via a *.dxf file.
Dale
Ah, I did try searching but didn’t find anything that quite answered the question.
I’m looking to generate quite complex shapes, so I’m going to try writing a script to generate them programatically. I wonder what the practical limits are to how many pads you can have in module.
I have found these two: