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Mail Archives: geda-help/2018/12/23/08:44:23

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Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2018 14:44:09 +0100 (CET)
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To: "richard lucassen (mailinglists AT lucassen DOT org) [via geda-help AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-help AT delorie DOT com>
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Subject: Re: [geda-help] rounded rectangle pin
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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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