Does anyone (@Albin) know if board2pdf plugin (v1.6) supports bitmap images. I’m trying to add a special instruction image to help with assembly. I imported an image onto the PCB (tried both .png and .jpg). It looks fine on the screen (added to the User.Comments layer) but it doesn’t come out in the assembly PDF. Text instructions on the same layer comes out fine.
(Great plugin)
Happy to hear that you like the plugin!
Board2Pdf supports bitmap images. I often use bitmap images in the Drawing Sheet (company logo). I had some problems getting this to work, but finally solved it.
However, I just tested adding a bitmap to the pcb using “Add Reference Image”, and it doesn’t seem like KiCad supports plotting these bitmaps to pdf. Board2Pdf uses the internal “plot to pdf” functionality of KiCad. If you manage to plot bitmaps using “File → Plot… → Plot format: PDF”, it should also work in Board2Pdf. If that works, but it still doesn’t work in Board2Pdf, please tell me.
Interestingly the company logo bitmap in the title block came through fine with board2pdf, but not the image on the PCB itself. I can confirm that the native File → Plot… → Plot format: PDF doesn’t work (tested on 7.0.8).
For now, I can workaround by adding the image to the worksheet directly, but it looks like a bug (unless it’s been fixed in the latest release. I’m not in a position to test unfortunately). @albin
Yea, doesn’t seem to work in 8.0.4 either, but I haven’t tested 8.99 so it may be implemented in nightly builds already. If it doesn’t work in 8.99 you can always create an issue on the KiCad Gitlab with a feature request.
Am I correct that you’re adding the bitmap using “Add Reference Image”? That’s the only way I know of. When looking closer it even says that the image will not be outputted if I hoover over the button.
I believe that the purpose of this button is not to add information to your pcb, but to add photos of a board that you wish to reverse engineer. But I can see why one would like to add information as images so it would be nice if the bitmaps was plotted to the pdf. Since it already works with bitmaps in the worksheet my guess is that it’s not that difficult to get it to work with “Reference Images” as well.
Yea, adding images in the worksheet is definitely not the best workaround, but at least it’s a workaround. 
In 7.08 the button was called “Add bitmap image”. Looks like the button has been renamed and its intended purpose more accurately described.
I’d like to be able to add bitmaps for describing special assembly instructions or modifications to the assembly. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who would want this!
Thanks for investigating. I’ll add it as a feature request.
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