Convert schematic and pcb to SVG with command line?

fiveight58 · October 19, 2022, 9:01am

Is there a way to convert a schematic (and layout) to SVG with kicad in command line?
Thanks!

JeffYoung · October 19, 2022, 10:46am

Not yet. In the nightlies (6.99) STEP output has been hooked up to the command line. Others will follow.

(Or at least I don’t think the others are hooked up yet. cc @marekr)

marekr · October 19, 2022, 12:42pm

I actually quietly added kicad-cli pcb export svg when I added the step stuff.

Schematic is a slightly different adventure…there are issues because the plotting functionality directly manipulates the SCH_FRAME which is bizarre and I don’t understand.

fiveight58 · October 20, 2022, 12:21am

So I can use kicad-cli with nightly version?

marekr · October 20, 2022, 11:08am

Yes

RacingJoe · October 20, 2022, 1:53pm

Nope - it has been removed from the make list with commit 8176100c a week ago and was never re-added since. Still, I hope it will be available as soon as possible.

marekr · October 20, 2022, 6:18pm

Oi, he made a mistake

marekr · October 20, 2022, 8:12pm

It’ll be in the next builds

fiveight58 · October 25, 2022, 4:29am

Hi:
I installed kicad 6.99 with kicad-nightly-r29704.d06155f6af-x86_64.exe.
And I input below command line to powershell, but I don’t get error nor ppp.svg file.

PS D:> .\ProgramFiles\KiCad\6.99\bin\kicad-cli.exe pcb export svg ppp.kicad_pcb
PS D:>

@marekr

marekr · October 25, 2022, 12:30pm

Try specify -o for output destination. I don’t know what it defaults to heh

kasbah · October 25, 2022, 2:04pm

I recently implemented schematic plotting in python for EDeA. There are some caveats: the font is different and some styles for the pins and labels are not yet rendered but you can try it out with:

git clone https://gitlab.com/edea-dev/edea
pip3 install ./edea
python3 -m edea --render example.kicad_sch --output example.svg

I’ve also been using a fairly minimal script that uses KiCad’s python API for plotting boards on kitspace-v2:

github.com

kitspace/kitspace-v2/blob/722a0a07d41c8f62d1a6f053a11cd2e9b54ab525/processor/src/tasks/processKicadPCB/plot_kicad_pcb

#!/usr/bin/env python3

"""
Generates Gerber or SVG files from .kicad_pcb

USAGE:
./plot_kicad_pcb gerber x.kicad_pcb output_directory/
./plot_kicad_pcb svg x.kicad_pcb /tmp/directory/ output.svg
"""

import time
import os
import sys
import glob
import re
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import pcbnew

from util import remove_color, empty_svg
from shrink_svg import shrink_svg

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fiveight58 · October 25, 2022, 2:08pm

Thanks! I get svg file with:

PS D:> .\ProgramFiles\KiCad\6.99\bin\kicad-cli.exe pcb export svg ppp.kicad_pcb -o ppp.svg

But when I open the ppp.svg file with microsoft edge, I can’t see anything.
ppp

marekr · October 25, 2022, 2:53pm

@fiveight58 Do you have any copper layers? Otherwise you have to specify the layers using
--layers [list of comma separated layernames]

such as
--layers F.Cu,F.Paste

also special options like
*.Cu,*.Paste, *.SilkS, *.Fab
exist

maui · October 25, 2022, 3:13pm

does it work also for dxf?

marekr · October 25, 2022, 3:15pm

Not yet implemented, could be pretty easily

maui · October 25, 2022, 3:16pm

it would be a nice plus

fiveight58 · October 26, 2022, 1:07am

Thanks!
How to specify all layers? I just want to plot all layers of PCB.

marekr · October 26, 2022, 1:20am

I just added a * wildcard. So just do --layers * in the next build

fiveight58 · October 26, 2022, 2:25am

Thanks!
And can you add sch export to svg option?It will be very useful.

fiveight58 · October 26, 2022, 2:35am

Thanks! I will try this.
Does EDeA can convert(import) altium pcbdoc and schdoc to kicad sch and pcb?