Mail Archives: geda-help/2018/12/23/08:44:23
On Sun, 23 Dec 2018, richard lucassen (mailinglists AT lucassen DOT org) [via geda-help AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
>This newbee is just playing a bit with "pcb" and I am just wondering if
>is possible to create a rectangle pin with rounded corners instead of
>the standard round or square ones, in ASCII art:
>
>/---------\
>| o |
>\---------/
>
>I can add thick lines on two sides to a normal round via, but I fear
>that is not the appropiate way.
>
>Or is there some or other library that contains such pins?
This has been a common feature request. Some EDA systems call these
oblong, with variable corner rounding radius. Adding plain copper lines is
not a good idea: they won't have mask opening normally and you also lose
the information that the line object belongs to a pin. Also, in pcb you
can not save arbtirary copper lines as part of an element (footprint).
So in geda/pcb it is not possible to do that without workarounds. You can
try to emulate it by adding overlapping pads. You could probably hack it
up with a round pin and two non-roundcap smd pads on the two sides. If you
want only the corner to be rounded slightly, I have no idea how that could
be done with this setup.
If you want a nice, clean solution instead of such workarounds, I
recommend using pcb-rnd instead of pcb. Pcb-rnd can read your .pcb and
footprint files, so you don't have to start over.
In pcb-rnd we have replaced pins and pads with padstacks. In a padstack
you can have different shapes, including round cap line, but we also
support arbitrary polygon shapes in padstacks. We have a shape generator
to help you generate such rounded corner rectangle (with rectangle
dimensions and rounding radius). Demo videos:
- shape generator: https://archive.org/details/pcb_rnd_shape
- how to create a footprint with round corner shaped pins (narrated):
https://archive.org/details/pcb-rnd-padstack
Ultimate fallback: if you want a shape so complex that even padstacks
can't handle, you can use a heavy terminal, which means anything you can
draw on a board can become a terminal (pin/pad). So there is no "that can
not draw done as pins/pads" in pcb-rnd.
(Related: pcb-rnd also allows you to include anything in your footprint)
HTH,
Igor2
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