Abstraction of pad shape selection in GUI (Simplify pad properties dialog.)

[Rene Poeschl]

Currently we have the following shapes to choose from (current nightly)
- circular
- oval (IPC calls this oblong)
- rectangular
- rounded rectangle (100% rounded rectangle is the same as oval)
- chamfered
- custom with circular anchor
- custom with rectangular anchor

And i fear that this might grow even further if we are not careful.

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my suggestion would be to combine at least rectangular, rounded rectangle and chamfered.

Simply call it rectangular pad and give it the parameters for the chamfered pad (round radius, chamfer size and corner selection.)

In the backend the least specialized pad is then selected depening what the user selected. (If round radius is 0 and no chamfer -> rect, if only round radius -> roundrect, else chamfered)
Or long term: Removal of these strange restricted "rectangle pad" file format options and combine everything into the most flexible option. (The selection of the most simple shape would then fall to the gerber export.)

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In theory we could also combine oval with either rounded rectangle or circular but that might just confuse users.

[Anton (antonpupkov)]

I do not see the pictures, which paramters are superfluous after all. I did not cause difficulties. It is another matter of default to select the most frequently changed parameter, for example, the diameter of the hole. If a selection of objects of a particular character is entered, then even you will not need to be selected by default.

[Rene Poeschl (poeschlr)]

Anton you might not have understood what the purpose of this request is.

This is report is only about the pad shapes (you know that drop down menu that grows with every kicad release)
For a user it really does not matter how kicad stores the data internally but right now there is no abstraction. See list above for details about what i suggest.

[KiCad Janitor (kicad-janitor)]

KiCad bug tracker has moved to Gitlab. This report is now available here: https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/2384