Altium surface pad next to throughhole pad design

Question

I'm trying to make a simple board that will use an Arduino Nano 33. These boards allow for being either used as an SMT board or with a standard throughhole header.

I'd like to make the board where I can use either - header at first so I can remove it if I need to redesign the board, and then SMT for when making it more compact once I verify the board works.

I'm not sure what the correct approach is in altium for doing this though. Through snap EDA I've download the footprint for both version and put them onto one footprint. This means I have duplicate designators at the moment, but I just want to know if overlapping a pad and via actually connects them? Or when exporting for PCB manufacturing will these actually get seperated?

Is there a better way to elongate one side of a via to make a solder pad?

If this is correct, how should I handle the designators in this case? Only keep the throughhole designator?

Answer 1

From PCB manufacturing point of view, this is fine. The SMT and THT pads will be connected.

From the design point of view, you should make a specific footprint for this case, as you will get DRC and collision errors by placing two footprints on top of each other.

You can actually create an offset through-hole pad in Altium, as shown below.