Currently if a Footprint has two pads with the same pin# Kicad raises a DRC issue and airwires/ratsnest, unless they touch or you copper link them.
For a long time I’ve wanted a check box in the Footprint shorts same # pins as if they were touching ‘Virtually’.
Mostly for Over-Board jumpers (wires) on single sided PCBs. As the Over-Board jumper is not a Schematic component, but a PCB layout object, you shouldn’t need to break up a schematic drawing with them, or have to live with incorrect airwires.
That just my oldest desire for this feature.
Since then I’ve also been using large 0Ω SMD resistors on 2-layer boards as Over-Board jumpers (mostly to keep heat conduction paths clean). So again I would like this feature.
My most recent desire is for this type of feature
Is devices with more than one shield connection to support this, Not because I’m running a signal or current through the shield, but because I’m only electrically connecting one pin. I still want a solder pad on the other shielded pins, and of course they are electrically the same, but I get disconnected DRC errors and airwires if I can’t get a copper path over there.
My current 'fix is to make custom foot prints and custom symbols that separate the pins discreetly (i.e. S1, S2 etc) so I can ‘unwire’ one or more of them. but this is frankly tedious and I would like to avoid it.
If you wanted this to be even more useful you could allow “DNP” to ‘optionally’ mask this feature to ‘Disabled’ since if the component isn’t going to be paced the pads would NOT be linked.
I say ‘optionally’ because most of the uses for these feature are through-hole parts, and on most boards we make, we in-house add the few non-SMD components locally/ourself as a cost-saving step, making them marked as DNP on the PCBA files sent to the board house, yet should still be connected.