Smarter pad entry for thick traces
Description
When entering / exiting oblong pads from the side with thick traces, ending the the trace in the center of the pad is not optimal or even possible.
Routing into the pad is less problematic, since the router prevents the snap if it would violate clearance. Starting a route from the pad often does not work at all, and you get hit with a "starting point violates DRC" error, because the router insists on starting in the center of the pad.
If the trace is thin enough not to cause clearance problems with the next pin, it's more of a visual offense:
But for thicker traces, moving the center point is required, and at the moment this takes a lot of manual fiddling and fighting the router/snapping:
Somewhat related: For the most extreme oblong pads, tracks with square ends (#2250) would be needed, but in my experience, just placing the track end a bit offset from the pad center is good enough 95% of time. If I really need to make use of 100% of the pad's width, I can still use a polygon. Apparently, Cadstar has this feature, and calls it "route offset" (#6648 (closed)).
KiCad Version
Application: KiCad PCB Editor
Version: (5.99.0-9987-g41839f7e3f), release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.1.4
Platform: Windows 10 (build 19042), 64-bit edition, 64 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
wxWidgets: 3.1.4 (wchar_t,STL containers)
Boost: 1.75.0
OCC: 7.5.0
Curl: 7.74.0-DEV
ngspice: 34
Compiler: Visual C++ 1928 without C++ ABI
Build settings:
KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON