> 3. There should be native support for elongated vias (they > are called "pads" in Eagle) when defining an element.
The way to do this in pcb is to put a pin and a pad in the same place. The pin gives you the drill hole, and the pad defines the elongated copper shape.
Yes, I've tried this with my footprints. The problem is that you need two pads (for a traditional double-layer footprint) and you need to edit the text file of the element to set the numbering of the pads. (Can I set the pad number through the GUI of PCB the way I can for the pin number by pressing 'n'?) This approach is error-prone, I felt. When I open up the text file of the element, I see a list of pads but I don't know which two pads are associated with pin 1, and so on.
It's not heated, it's just nobody has had the time to do it right, yet. For example, a true "multipin" (my name) would need to know more about the physical layer stack than pcb currently knows. But I do envision a "multipin" having the ability to independently specify:
* top, inner, and bottom shapes
* copper shapes, including hole-to-edge distance and radius of each corner
* pads defined by polygons
* copper, paste, and mask each independently defined
The current plan is to defer this until after the "layer type flags" project is done, as that project gives us proper mask, paste, etc layers.
Yes, I've been reading some of the discussions about the "multipin" and the layer-type projects, and I got the sense that these would make a lot of the work easier for elongated pads. I think it's a good idea to do it in the sequence you intend. Will make the implementation a whole lot cleaner and more powerful internally.
Tarun --
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