> People working with components from the scrap are fairly used to mount the > components they have, and not they want. :-) > To hell what shape a Capacitor has. He has to match capacitance, voltage, > ESR......so its nice to have layouts which would accept more > than one shape > of component.
I agree, my junk box is the same as everyone elses :-) However Kicad was not designed as that sort of program. So we have to workaround things as best we can. There is a lot of development going on with Kicad, so lots of improvements are being worked on. The next beta release looks like it will be fairly soon, but if not you can play wit the nightly builds if you want to. As kicad develops I would expect that there will be some easier methods to add multiple pads developed. There was some discussion several months ago regarding some components that have more than one power pin, This was a solution to some noise issues I think by the component manaf. however two power pins caused quite a but of confusion. So at least that sort of problem has been flagged up. I don't know if there is any solution to this so far as I've not been taking the nightly builds. If anything has been done then that might help. > Of course. This would eliminate some other similar Problems ocouring with > components which have more than one pad per connection. Worst i actual have > is a screw terminal with ten pads in two rows, all the same > connection.......:-) That should not be an issue really, give each terminal pad it's own number and also create a connector part with a matching number system, then connections you make on the circuit diagram will be reflected onto the module, including any multiple connections. I have some terminal blocks that already have one side parallel connected, with the other side for wires. i.e. it forms a bus-bar type connection. Each pad is numbered differently and on the circuit I just make sure I parallel connect all the pins, that keeps everything happy. > An other point would be a TO-92 footprint wich allows stright and molded > Types. I saw it so often, but seldom you get a layout program, which allows > this...... That's more difficult - you can end up with clearance issues and it can make track routing a bit awkward. I tried that some time ago and in the end I decided it was easier to simply have two footprints. :-) > I am thinking, more than one pad per connection would create an logical > problem for DRC. Perhaps there would be a way to let the DRC recognizing a > (well declarated) group of pads as one pad? What would be easier would be the ability to draw custom pad shapes with multiple drill points. That way there would only be one pad number to worry about. Andy
