@Jarrett pointed out in Slack that I made KiCad’s workflow look a bit painful, primarily because of all the separate programs involved. In practice, they’re all toolbar buttons in the program manager and other apps, so you don’t have to think of them as separate programs if you don’t want to.
The key thing to be aware of if you have experience with other PCB layout packages is that there’s one more step to KiCad’s overall workflow than there is in other programs like Eagle. Often it’s a two step process of:
design schematic,
layout board.
With KiCad it’s:
design schematic,
pick footprints for each component,
layout board.
The difference comes from KiCad treating schematic symbols as independent of PCB footprints for parts, where most other programs apparently combine a schematic symbol and a PCB footprint into a single item.
If you’re new to PCB layout, that distinction doesn’t matter so much. Just learn the basic workflow and have fun.
Has it been a week already? That’s right, it’s time for our second KiCad Summer Nights! Night. ahem
Looks like we don’t have any arranged walkthrough or presentation for tomorrow, so bring along a circuit idea and see how far you can take it through the process. I’ll try to print out a few copies of the Atari Punk Console schematic in case you’re short on inspiration, but anything will do, really. If you simply want to figure out how to import images into the copper layer and produce a gold-on-purple self-portrait, no one will stop you!
Whether you came last week or not, feel free to drop in and give KiCad a try. The only thing you’ll need to bring is a laptop with KiCad installed or at least downloaded.
That’s KiCad Summer Nights, Wednesday 7:30 Pacific at a Hackspace near you!
The second night was just like the first! Except with less people. It was more of a boutique learning experience, really. I got a board design out of it, so I’m happy - happy enough to be doing it again tonight!
Come one, come all and we’ll fumble through a bit more PCB design together. Bring your laptop with KiCad installed, or at least downloaded. And I’m sure Richard still recommends a mouse.
Tonight at 7:30. Be there, or… well there’s really no other option.
I just posted in another thread… thanks to @bruce I think I’ve got my first kicad PCB designed. I need someone with real EE experience to validate my layout before I go to production.
Minimum you’ll likely want is copper, silk, mask and edge cuts. If you want a stencil, you’ll need paste layers. It might be a good habit just to get used to including it. That works out as:
F.Cu
B.Cu
F.Paste
B.Paste
F.SilkS
B.SilkS
F.Mask
B.Mask
Edge.Cuts
You’ll want to make sure the ‘Subtract soldermask from silkscreen’ checkbox is enabled before you plot your gerbers, and it’s probably cleanest to dump the gerbers into a subfolder of your project, say, ‘gerbers/’. Other than that, the defaults in the plot dialog box are probably okay.
Also, don’t forget your drill file! After you click ‘Plot’, also click on the ‘Generate Drill File’ button.
Finally, put the contents of the gerbers folder into a zip file, (it works fine with no path information, but I’d guess they strip paths when they extract the zip so zipping the gerbers folder is probably fine) rename the zip to match your project, and upload the zip to whatever board house you use.
It’s that time once more, our forth and final KiCad Summer Night!
The third session was again fairly small, which I think worked pretty well. VHS is developing a handful of reasonably skilled KiCad users, don’t you want to be one of them?
I’ll be bringing by the small and simple board I rushed out on the first night, which will be a great aid for examining drill size and silkscreen issues; things you might not focus on when first running through all of the steps required in completing a board design. (The board works, but it’s pretty easy to see how it could be improved.)
See you at VHS, 7:30 PM tonight! This is your last chance, don’t miss it!