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I am drawing a board which will fit in an enclosure with batteries. The battery terminal tabs should come up through slots in the PCB, and solder to a pad around the slot perimeter.

I created a new connector in our parts library as a through-hole with the dimensions of the slot I need. The three choices for hole types are "round", "rectangle", and "slot". I want to use "slot", but you can see below that it has a really weird effect on the copper pour.

Rectangle through-hole:

Rectangular through-hole

I don't want a rectangle, but it has a predictable effect on the copper pours. The ground plane on the bottom layer connects to the pad, and the top copper is pushed away beyond the region where solder mask will be removed.

Slot through-hole:

Slot through-hole

The slot-type through-hole pushes the top copper layer out in a weird blown up and rotated version of the actual slot.

Why is this happening?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ There is either something else wrong in another layer or you haven't repoured the affected polygons. \$\endgroup\$ – Wesley Lee Jul 18 '18 at 15:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ I did repour the polygons. I can't figure out if anything is wrong in another layer. I'm not sure what to look for. \$\endgroup\$ – Yankee Jul 18 '18 at 15:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ This question would probably get better answers on the Altium forums. \$\endgroup\$ – The Photon Jul 18 '18 at 15:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ There is a lot of weirdness in the copper pour category in Altium (which can differ even between point releases). Which version are you using? \$\endgroup\$ – Peter Smith Jul 18 '18 at 15:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Peter Smith I noticed that, especially with the polygon connection style settings. Altium version is 18.1.7. \$\endgroup\$ – Yankee Jul 18 '18 at 16:13
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I don't know if you fixed the problem by now, but this is my idea of it.

I had the same problem as you today.

You probably set the length of the slot to the width and visa versa.

Lets say, based on the image that the width is 1mm and height 4mm. In the slot properties you have to provide the Hole Size as width (1mm) and Length as Height (4mm). Then you have to rotate the Hole that it points up (not the size and shape data below that, they can be changed freely). Fixed my problem.

Settings overview slot

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