How to generate regular hole pattern

[GregDunn]

I did a search here but nothing useful came up.  It's really a pretty basic thing, so hopefully someone has come up with a quick solution around here.  I suspect some of the open source PCB layout tools like kicad might be able to do what I need, so that's why I put it in here to start...

All I need is to generate a template/pattern for a bunch of regularly spaced holes (maybe 30-35) that I want to drill in a piece of scrap plastic.  I think they're going to be on about 0.07" center, and maybe .02" diameter holes - but I won't be 100% sure till I place the template in the project space and verify it.  They need to pass 30ga insulated wire, which has a slight tolerance so I may need to adjust after generating a test template.  If they'd been 0.1" center, I could have used a piece of perfboard, but noooooo...

Yeah, I could lay it out with a ruler, but then if I calculated wrong with my initial estimate, I'll have to do it all over again.  Faster if there's something semi-automated so I can print out updates quickly.

[T3sl4co1l]

Draw dots in Paint, and print to scale.

If you have any better editing tool, use that.

Tim

[NivagSwerdna]

This really depends on how much time you want to spend and how often you are going to do this sort of thing...

Personally I use LibreCAD for 2D and Fusion360 for 3D.

(and DipTrace for Schematic and PCB Layout)

Any of those would do what you want.... and a lot more!

(Make sure you check that your software is scaling for the printer correctly by checking with a ruler the first time; any decent software should get it right first time)

[sokoloff]

KiCAD files are plain text and fairly human-readable/editable (for simple things like this).

I’d be inclined to lay out a file with 3 holes carefully spaced (so I knew the file format/pattern) and then write the file with a small program (or text editor and calculator nearby).

If you really can’t manage this yourself, I’m sure someone on here is willing to one-off it for you (including me).

[tpowell1830]

A couple of links to view. Remember to calibrate your printer as someone else stated.


https://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/free-download/


Hope this helps...

[GregDunn]

Yeah, using a scaled drawing program works fine; it just took longer than I thought it should to generate repeating rows and they're not easily scalable, which is why I thought of a CAD or PCB program.  Back in 1983 when we found that an easy way to buy a computer without weeks of admin paperwork was to mark it as a "schematic drawing tool"     we had a very rudimentary piece of software which allowed you to generate repeating patterns with a couple of mouse clicks.  That was also the first computer we'd ever had in the department with a mouse...  Anyway, one of the problems there was that it required custom driver software for a pen plotter (!) to output a print which was to scale.  Laser printer?  What's that?

I fooled around with kicad for a bit and couldn't find the proper commands, though no doubt it'll do it somewhere.  I've used it many times for simulations, but never for PCBs, and the layout program is a bit different.  I haven't tried LibreCAD yet, though I use LibreOffice for cross-platform stuff all the time; it was next on my list of things to try.  Since the hope was to save time I thought I'd first try a basic drawing program and attempt to put something together to find out if it was possible to do what I wanted.  It wasn't (couldn't extend the pattern to multiple objects directly) but luckily my original measurement was accurate and the first pattern I generated by cut-and-paste was good.

Now that I've got something useful I'll look at trying to make kicad behave; since I use it for simulations, having  mastery over the PCB portion will probably get used a lot in the future anyway...

[Rerouter]

In kicad, the feature you want to use is "User Grid",

You set it up under veiw/grid settings, then select user grid. this way you can have custom X/Y spacing, so you only need to draw 1 hole, then duplicate along the grid.

Your 0.2" diameter seemed like it was meant to be 0.02" so I scaled accordingly, attached is a pdf from kicad using a custom grid of Y = 1.778, X = 0.254mm this is just because I am a metric person, if your using imperial, then you just set it in imperial.

[GregDunn]

Yeah, that'll work - thanks!  Next time I'll be able to be a bit quicker in setting up a pattern.

[langwadt]

In kicad, the feature you want to use is "User Grid",

You set it up under veiw/grid settings, then select user grid. this way you can have custom X/Y spacing, so you only need to draw 1 hole, then duplicate along the grid.

Your 0.2" diameter seemed like it was meant to be 0.02" so I scaled accordingly, attached is a pdf from kicad using a custom grid of Y = 1.778, X = 0.254mm this is just because I am a metric person, if your using imperial, then you just set it in imperial.

even simpler use the create array feature