eCADBridge  |  Footprint Library Practice

Three hours of last Tuesday vanished into one stubborn right-angle USB-C receptacle. The auto-placer refused every spot. Its courtyard, computed as a bounding box, had quietly inflated nearly a millimeter.

Honestly, this kind of thing happens more often than I like to admit. Ask any library engineer what a courtyard is, and you will get the same confident answer: “the component body plus 0.25 mm.” Ask where that 0.25 mm actually comes from, and the room goes quiet. I have asked it. I have also been the one going quiet.

Here is the uncomfortable truth I have learned the hard way. Most courtyards in production libraries are just inflated rectangles. That shortcut quietly breaks auto-placement, blocks valid routing channels, and sometimes lets two parts collide in real life while DRC stays perfectly green.

The fix …

— Article from E-Cad Bridge —