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.