Re: gEDA-user: footprint creation war

[Randall Nortman <geda-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 04:03:05PM -0500, Phil Taylor wrote:
> 
> The best way I've found to create footprints is in a text editor.
> 
> If there is the goal of making a shared library, shouldn't the parts going
> into it be detailed and exact as only text-written parts can be?  Think of
> converting a footprint's dimensions from mils to millimeters and reading
> "2.00" on your calculator ... it gives legibility and confidence. 
> 
> Does anyone have a problem if I recommend on the wiki that writing footprints
> in text is the fastest(?) best(?) most precise(?) most legible(?) or ____ way
> to make footprints?

Hear, hear!  I found it very inconvenient to try to make footprints
graphically.  But after struggling with using m4 macros to do it, I
ultimately just made myself a python library that gives me a few
functions that make it easy to generate most footprints
programmatically.  I posted the scripts here a while back, though
there doesn't seem to have been much interest.

Whether you do it programmatically or by hand in a text editor, it
seems far more reliable (in terms of precision) than drawing them, and
not really any slower.  In fact, if you are working from a component
or land pattern diagram with measurements spelled out on it, it seems
substantially quicker.  For common shapes, I already have python
scripts that are totally point & shoot -- you just put in body size,
number of pins, pin pitch, and pad length/width, and it does the rest.