Is there a good way to create diagonal pads in Eagle and get them through the DRC bot?
How I got here:
I created a SMD library part with diagonal pads (inductor) for a trial project.
Nice pictures in Eagle and ViewMate. Fails DRCbot ‘aperture too thin’. Pretty obvious 5 mil aperture in the cmp (topcop) file.
Other posts indicate this is because Eagle uses tiny apertures to make the diagonal pad (indeed, if one looks closely in ViewMate, the diag pads’ corners are rounded implying rotated rectangles were not used).
OK, maybe this is a Gerber limitation, an Eagle limitation, or a limitation in the DRCbot not wanting to do a geometric examination for every aperture too thin (most of which are user error anyway), or something, but the bottom line is that the diagonal pad doesn’t work as is from the library.
I think I can work around this in one way or another (next thing to try is modifying the lbr part to have round pads but not change the stop or paste mask, then manually routing copper under the stop-- but this makes the lbr part incomprehensible to any normal person, and does not address using a general part that is rotated 45).
But, I don’t want to re-invent the wheel if there is a simple way to get an Eagle diagonal pad through the DRCbot. So I’m interested in solutions other people have found.
(as a side question, does Kicad or Protel have the same issue with the DRCbot? Or is this Eagle only?)
Thanks.