your through hole footprints don’t actually need to be round! I designed and produced a bunch of prototype boards with various different symbols.

Protoboard files

you can just upload this to JLCPCB or PCBWAY and order 5 for a few bucks.

Quick how to

To make your own footprint you need a clean .png of your intended shape. I use inkscape to clean up a file. I imported an SVG and exported it as a PNG.

In kicad open the Image Converter from the home screen. here we import our image. Set the Output Size to an appropriate size for our footprint. (I went for 2.4×2.7mm) We also set the Output Format to Footprint (Layer: F.Cu). Press Export to Clipboard.

in kicad, open the footprint editor and make a new footprint. Add a singular pad.

Now with the pad selected press CTRL+E, This allows us to modify the pad. While in Pad Edit Mode press CTRL + V now we paste the footprint we just copied from the Image Converter.

You might need to make the starting pad smaller. but once you press CTRL + E again your new custom pad should be there! Now we can add multiple, give them unique pad numbers and save it to a custom library. Now this footprint can be used in your designs!

To make the protoboard just scale this up. keep in mind to use the 2.54mm spacing. this is how my star board looksed. (you can download all of them in the link above.)