I am creating a custom footprint for a button which i’m nearly finished with, however i would like to turn each side into a pad with the connection point on each of the protruding sections at the bottom.
I have tried placing a rectangular pad over top which looks correct but in the pcb editor you cannot run a wire to it as it the protrusion behind the pad shows up green.
Is there a way to combine a pad with some existing lines and arcs?
Ah ive figured it out,
Adding the pad where i want it
Clicking “Edit pad as custom shapes”
Holding CRTL and highlighting all the parts including the pad
Then clicking finish pad.
The only problem is it creates a mess of the numbering and net displays, but i have a feeling im goingto have to live with that?
Didn’t tried it myself, and can’t check it now (don’t have here V7), but as I remember the discussions at forum may be only entering Edit pad as shapes and finishing it is enough to convert all connected copper into pad (may be you need not to select all connected copper).
You can simplify this a bit. First draw some graphics on a copper layer, then Enter pad as Graphic Shapes with [Ctrl + e] and [Ctrl + e] again to exit that mode. At that point any graphics that is overlapping with the pad will become part of the pad, just like Piotr wrote just before me. (That is how KiCad V7 behaves).
KiCad also sizes pad numbers to fill the pad area. Normally this works well, but it does look a bit confusing when your pads are intertwined like this.
The only problem is it creates a mess of the numbering, but i have a feeling im goingto have to live with that?
If you don’t like that feeling you could follow these steps:
Attention: this is only valid for v7.
v7.99 (==next year v8) has retired the “custom Shape Primitives” pane. I have to investigate how a number box is added there and how v7-footprints with numberbox will be imported to v8.
Thanks, just looked into the FP-editor.
Existing text number boxes (in existing footprints) from v7 footprints are imported correctly and can be edited with a dedicated “Pad number box properties” dialog or with the generic properties panel.
But how should I add a pad number box for newly created footprints? There is no entry “Place–>Add pad number box” in the main menu bar. And the hotkey-section shows also no command for “add pad number box”. And also no entry in the RMB-click context menu.
Draw a rectangle in Pad Edit Mode and then check the checkbox in the Properties Inspector.
Thanks, I spent over half an hour yesterday, in vain, trying to add the pad box after reading mf-ibfeew’s comment here.
I’d have never worked that out. 
I’ll be the first to admit it’s non-obvious. But we have a policy about not making the main menubar contextual, and I don’t want to have it cluttering up the Place menu most of the time (remember that we’d also need “spoke template”, which you can turn a segment into in Pad Edit Mode).
I am very delinquent in writing up documentation for pad edit mode, which I think will help somewhat.
Mine was a comment only. In no way was it a criticism. I don’t criticize Kicad contributors.
It must also be taken into account that we are discussing 7.99 which is still, in many respects, far from a complete product.
My only disappointment was not being able to show @mf_ibfeew how to find a Kicad function 
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