Is there a way to increase the scale of a PCB image when generating an assembly drawing?
I designed a very small SMT printed circuit and would like to create an assembly drawing that is say 4:1 scale. Is this possible and I am just missing something/
Thanks,
Dave C
Welcome to the forum…
Printing specific items (such as PCB)… Yes, and No…
You can:
• ‘Plot’ PostSctipt and HPGL at different scales (there’s a checkbox)
• Print at Custom Scale (dependent on your system/printer)
• On Mac, can Print to PDF-Preview and set the Scale
BUT, these force the entire page to the Scale and will push off the Border/Text Box/Legend…etc
How I do it:
• I Print As-Is at scale 1:1
• Open it in Preview (or use screen view - both ways work so usually use Screen view) and Zoom-in the image to desired size, Copy it and Paste it into empty page with Border and Text box (Legend)… Pretty simple…
This is more about Copy&Paste…
I had a look at: PCB Editor / File / Plot and this does have a “Scaling” option, but it’s greyed out for most Plot Formats.
And even when it’s selectable (For example for Postscript output), there are only very few options:
.SVG is probably the most universal vector output format these days, and scaling and other post processing should be fairly easy in a generic program that supports that format.
Following up with Example…
Image 1 = Original Print from Kicad
Image 2 = Copied, Cut, Pasted-Zoomed image of PCB, only…
To avoid confusion: Print and Plot are two different functions in KiCad. Only Print has real scaling. Fit to Page is often enough, but if you have large PCB with small text, you need to zoom into some part of the board which may need some tweaking (ask if you need to).
On the other hand, if you need help for manual assembly and you or whoever does it can use a computer/monitor for it, InteractiveHTMLBom plugin is great. It’s available from the Plugin and Content Manager.
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