I’m in northern Delaware. I’ve done a couple community projects with the group designing boards for them, so I have live running examples of what can be done with custom PCB designing to help drive interest. We already have a class taking a schematic, bread boarding the circuit, and then building it on protoboard (we use AdaFruit’s perma-protos to help with the conceptual transfer from breadboard to protoboard). I’ll probably be using that class as a jumping off point showing how having boards made is easier for some cases than throwing together a protoboard.
Again, one of the community projects will help because it uses multiple copies of the same board (multiple mux/demux boards for expanding the project by 8 channels at a time, then each channel has it’s own LED driver and sensor board).
Yes, if it is a small circuit, it is really hard to beat OSHPark finished quality for the time and price. It is also fairly difficult to breadboard surface mount parts. And, the ERC and DRC in KiCad are good enough that they really help ensure the board will come back as something workable.
The only issue that is easy to get wrong is the pin numbers for transistors; as these can change based upon the Footprint that is selected.
Just found this Feb 2017 post by Foalyy on his KiCAD cheatsheet. I really liked it and appreciate his summary of steps and his 5.01 update. I prefer the Portrait version btw.
I scanned through all the replies to this post down to those dated 2019 and did not see anyone remark on the fact that within the cheatsheet steps there is no mention of creating the Netlist after creating the schematic diagram. If I’m not mistaken, this is a critical step between schematic creation and association of component footprints to the components in the netlist and must be done before the creation of a KiCAD PCB layout and the resulting gerber files can be created.
If I’m being too granular, I offer my apologies in advance.
Cheatsheet is not a tutorial, nor is it complete, it’s just a quick reference for some often used shortcuts, as the name implies. And that it does pretty well.
Generating the netlist is a bit old fashioned anyway. For a few years there has been [F8] to get schematic data into Pcbnew.
The primary suggested workflow for KiCad (not the only one) as suggested by the order of toolbar icons is this:
Draw schematic.
Annotate schematic.
Run ERC (Electrical Rules Check).
Assign footprints with either the Assign Footprints window (used to be called CvPCB in older versions) or the Edit Symbol Fields tool.
Update PCB from Schematic (direct netlist information transfer w/o need of a netlist file).
Define board design rules.
Layout board.
Run DRC (Design Rules Check).
Prepare fabrication files.
Obviously, this quick and dirty workflow outline skips a lot. Symbol and footprint generation, BOM, iterations, etc. BTW, updating the PCB from the Schematic will automatically open PCBNew if it isn’t already open.
Edit: I see now, the landscape version is missing the Netlist icon you pointed out!
My point of observation on the “Netlist” stemmed from the fact that this “cheatsheet” showed the general procedural flow (along with shortcut tips) of the steps taken in creating the end product…being the gerber files needed for pcb fabrication.
Are you then saying that Netlists are now automatically created during the schematic drawing and are then easily accessed/ imported in the pcbnew step?
Bear in mind, I come from the old days, where the schematic was drawn based on components used, a connection list or “Netlist” was created that itemized component node’s connection to other component nodes. This netlist was used along with the schematic and the component footprint datasheets by the PCB artwork layout tech to double check that all schematic related traces/pads/vias were represented in the camera-ready PCB artwork. Having the Netlist was a major step.
Schematic w/component spec datasheets
Component Node Connection list created
PCB Artwork Layers Layout (4:1 scale usually)
HiRes Camera shoots Negative of Layers reduced to 1:1
Photo Masks generated
Layers Exposed and developed
Layer Masks and Labeling Applied
Layers laminated (for 4 layer boards)
Boards drilled and outlines milled
It would seem that today the steps are greatly reduced to:
Schematic w/component spec datasheets
Component Node Connection list created
PCB Layout done for all layers (tracks, vias, footprints, board profile, etc.)
Update PCB causes an incremental update (including initial load) of the PCB from the schematic, combining the steps of generate netlist, go to pcbnew, import netlist. and giving more options for the update. Try it and you’ll understand.
In 5.99 and beyond it’s even more important to use the internal Update mechanism. Features have been added which just don’t work with an external netlist. The external netlist file is nowadays meant only for communication with external 3rd party programs.
Thanks, I will try if I ever get to that point. I’m attempting my first schematic entry of a board I just prototyped in wire-wrap. These are old style 14 and 16 pin DIP ICs, 1/8w resistors, etc. I’m having to create my own symbol for an XR2206 (made one aborted attempted so far). The custom symbol file wasn’t being saved in my personal library I created for some reason, wouldn’t let me copy and paste it.
Wow, your talking version 5.99. I downloaded what appeared to be the latest version for Windows 10 64-bit but it is only 5.1.6-1. What am I missing here?
Sorry, it’s the development version, “nightly builds”, where new features are introduced. It’s unstable and buggy, not yet recommended for “real work”. But the feature freeze (i.e. no new major features anymore, only small changes and bugfixes) is coming soon and we are waiting it to stabilize and hopefully maybe early next year released as 6.0.
Now I get it. I had read on the KiCAD website that development versions were available. Thanks for clarifying anything beyond 5.1.x is unstable, not ready for prime-time.
I don’t want “buggy” releases as a new-comer, just learning the latest, greatest PCB software.
