thatch
commented
6 years ago After thinking about it more, I can probably use graphic copper to make the footprint normal on the board, assuming you don't have a zone that connects to the half-pads. Do you think this would be accepted upstream, given that it will require hand-editing the footprint file?
In the common case of having a ground pour, I care most about getting the cap close to a vcc.
Right now this is a manual process, putting text for humans on the schematic and verifying I didn't mix things up. Thinking about automating, I could use one of the net-tie parts, but they don't have schematic symbols and now I have to move two parts around on my board.
As a short-term hack, I could give the positive side of the cap half-pads, where one is for input and one is for output? I think it would look funny, but work. Better would be if I could specify fat traces (or something that makes it treat like a spring -- basically overlay while moving in pcbnew the pads of parts it should be close to) in the schematic, e.g. "this should be short" or "this should be high current". I think star grounds, feedback resistor dividers, etc would also benefit from this (say, to measure output voltage as close to an output connector).