This is my first time laying pcb board so please bare with me if I say anything stupid or slow understanding things.
I followed a guide I saw online and then redid it with my own circuit, I couldn’t figure out 2 things:
First is not too important but it would look nice my 3d model doesn’t have any models on it, just the pcb board with the pins connections. I do remember when I installed kicad It said something about 3d at the end but I stupidly didn’t read it, so maybe it said something about installing models?
The 2nd is I couldn’t figure out how to use freerouting. I downloaded it from a repo I found online but I couldn’t find instruction on the repo, I tried searching online but there is couple of guides and they are different from each other. Is there a official guide on how to install auto routing?
for the footprint editor, click on that circled button (1, red) to get to the 3d settings… if there are no 3d shape names in there or you can’t find the 3d shape in that path (go with explorer) then you need to download them or make your own
for the 3d view… while you’re in the footprint editor, hit [Alt]+[3] - the 3d viewer should open for this footprint. If the 3d settings are correct you should e able to see something here. Make sure that ‘Show component 3D shapes’ is active though.
As for autorouting and it being your first time laying out a pcb board, I would avoid that for 2 reasons:
autorouters aren’t perfect and you should know when it did something stupid and be able to rectify
half the fun and satisfaction doing a layout is doing it by hand… you also learn the program way better than to count on an autorouter… so far I didn’t need one and unless I would have to layout a 6+ layer board with a couple of QFP/MFN packages I don’t think I’ll ever need it.
Thank you, I was able to get the 3d models. Though not for all of them, for some reason my capacitors are not showing even though I picked them from the library and didn’t add them myself I guess the library doesn’t have all of them no big deal.
I was able to route everything in my circuit but I feel like it looks ugly, I was trying to avoid using a 2nd layer too much because our school printer through hole are not connected from the top layer to the bottom.
Can’t upload images because I am a new user so here is a screenshot of what I have so far.
EDIT: I found out it is called non plated through hole.
not too bad for a first… anything that looks better is just a question of practice… , practice… and more practice
You can ask most here and they’ll probably tell you that they need 1-2 test-runs for placements/track-layout per IC for new circuits/pcbs.
It comes with time that you remember optimal sub-groups and apply proven solutions to similar problems.
