When I try the other way around, after selecting the Route tracks tool
and clicking on the any of the lower shields, it only highlights the pads green.
Possible solution.
I’d prefer a fix to this problem or a better solution, of course thus
correct me if I’m wrong but I used the Draw a line tool to draw a line
from the shields to the filled zone which is GND
which seems to have worked because I can see GND written in the lines.
I would dissect your footprint.
The upper shield pads are clearly different than the lower ones, just by looking at them.
Are the lower ones actually pads? Or just a trace?
Yes, I noticed that as well… but never thought it would be an issue until
I realized the tracks were not connecting to the pads.
How do I dissect this ?
I’ve looked into the properties of the footprint and changed the pad’s sizes etc but I’m unable to see
what more I can do make make the tracks recognize the shield pads as GND
Hard to say without examining the footprint, but I would first look at why the keep-out areas are different on the two pads. The top pad has a uniform amount, while the bottom pad has copper sticking out of the keep-out area on the long ends. That really doesn’t seem right.
(If it is even a keep-out area. Why is it yellow? Through-hole? I don’t have KiCad in front of me to check).
I’m having a very similar issue, which I never encountered in older versions of KiCAD. I’m creating/routing my PCB manually from scratch, and very often pads (only using inbuilt components/footprints!) simply will not connect together. HOWEVER, if I cut and then paste one or both components, suddenly they connect without issue. This happens constantly, and I can discern no pattern whatsoever. I believe I initally copied some parts from a previous design, but that’s the only potential difference I can think of. It’s quite possible I’m doing something silly but I’ve never had this issue before, and it’s extremely frustrating!
I have, yeah - but best practices aside, my current board is extremely simple, and this seems like a very basic function which shouldn’t have this kind of problem…
Maybe there is a problem with the downloaded footprint from Snap? The holes on the bottom picture have been changed since the original at the top of the thread also.
What Kicad version are you using?
Were the original parts placed on the original PCB directly, or placed in personal libraries first?
Were the parts copied to the new project just copy/paste, or placed via a personal library?
I was using 8.0.6, but the issue persists in 8.0.7. Everything was placed from the regular component picker (and copy/paste from PCB to PCB), I haven’t set up any personal libraries. I tried replacing every part I’d copied and pasted with new copies from the component library, and yet the issue still occurs - seemingly randomly. Simply cutting and pasting the new components temporarily fixes the issue, although say I’m connecting a header through-hole to a through-hole resistor… It seems random which of the two components I need to cut/paste to get things to connect. It’s maddening. I’m currently rebuilding the project from scratch in 7.0.11 - I never had any such issues in 7.x so we’ll see how that goes.
This isn’t the first time when Snap offers a footprint which doesn’t completely work in KiCad. Without testing it looks to me like the elongated copper pad isn’t actually part of the THD pad but an oblong copper shape. Therefore it’s not connected to the net and causes the DRC problem.
There are several ways to fix it, I recommend you dissect the footprint and learn its properties. You’ll learn something about KiCad at the same time. When you can tell us how the pads are constructed, you can ask how to recreate it correctly in KiCad.
BTW, the Snap folks have been responsive when contacted. They have even got help here to fix their footprint exporter for KiCad! You can report bugs in their site. Or we can even try if @NatashaABaker is still following this forum…
