I hereby certify that I am not simply asking someone else to design a footprint for me.
I am trying to make a footprint for a PCB edge connector, but the “edge cuts” layer is greyed out and isn’t accessible when editing an object’s properties either. From some googling it seems that the kicad devs have decided that this shouldn’t be allowed for some reason, but nobody actually explains it. This seems like very obvious functionality to have, given that PCB edge connectors exist.
What version are you using?
Is the problem with the pcb outline (edge cuts) or other?
You should be able to select Edge Cuts and draw the desired outline with notches for the male end to mate with the socket edges, while normally editing the pcb.
It seems like you are trying to change the outline while editing a footprint.
EdgeCuts layer is not available when drawing footprints, but you can do your drawing on the Dwgs.User or any other drawing layer (Cmts.User, Eco1.User or Eco2.User, etc.) and when inserting your footprint into your board you can select your border and move it to Edge.Cuts.
EDIT: A whole developer’s thread about this topic:
https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/1970
You could boiled down to:
jean-pierre charras (jp-charras) wrote:
In fact Pcbnew takes in account edge cuts in footprints (at least plot
files and when builds the board outlines).The reason edge cuts are not allowed is due to:
1 - board outline must be a closed simple polygon (for 3D view, for DSN
export and to have a well defined outline to make the board.
2 - holes created by edge cuts are allowed in boards, but for the same
reasons, they should be simple polygons, non intersecting between them and
the main outline.
Otherwise you cannot really define the board shape.
3 - Edge cuts in footprints cannot safely meet these requirement, because
they are created without knowledge of the board ( grid size for instance,
and other footprints put on the board).So, allowing edge cuts in footprints is a good way to create board outline
issues.
Ahh, thank you. I must say, I disagree since snapping is available and works, but I can’t do software development so I don’t get a say.
Agree. I used it sometime when working in my old Protel 3. According to what I have read at forum to do it in KiCad V5 you have to use text editor (or other tool - you can write a simple program doing it). Then footprints having something at Edge.Cuts are accepted by PcbNew (according to what I have read - never checked it myself).
I don’t know if in V6 it will be possible.
Note that the issue is closed because “fix-committed”. V6 accepts Edge.Cuts in footprints. The users are still responsible for potential problems which jp-charras mentioned, but at least it’s officially supported.
Snapping or other editing features don’t necessarily make footprint Edge.Cuts easy to use. Let’s say we have a board with an outline drawn with a rectangle (v6 feature). What happens when a footprint with Edge.Cuts is placed there? The outline is invalid. It must be totally redrawn with segments to avoid DRC errors.
These kind of problems could of course be fixed in KiCad by changing some behavior of the software. The most probable solution which may come in some later major version involves separating the actual board outline from the Edge.Cuts graphics conceptually. Until then it would be too much work for too little benefit to try to fix the possible edge cases (not sorry for the pun) by coding. Add Edge.Cuts to footprints on your own responsibility.
For what I know, lines on Edge.Cuts are allowed in footprints.
For example: “Connector_PCBEdge/molex_EDGELOCK_2_CKT” has a bunch of very specific lines on Edge.Cuts.
In KiCad-nightly V6.0.0.rc1 I can also move lines to Edge.Cuts, or directly draw on that layer. So the strange limits on this in KiCad V5 have been lifted in the new coming KiCad.
Oh, that’s good news that it’ll be in the next release. I agree that the problems do exist, I just don’t think they’re a valid reason to restrict the functionality. The program already fails gracefully if the board edge isn’t complete, giving one of the best error messages I’ve seen, complete with exact coordinates of the problem it encountered.
Thanks everyone for the information.
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