Seeking advice to create new PCB
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Are you trying to reverse engineer the board? There are people who know about that workflow. (Not me.)
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This board and similar are +40 year old. Needing to reproduce.
Is this picture everything you have about it?
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Hello and welcome @Pulsed_Power
Before you go to the trouble of reproducing this board, are you able to access all the parts required.
Sourcing the Mode switch and Bass & Trebble turnovers and potentiometers could be problematic.
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I have much more but the forum would only let me post one attachment
Yes all parts are available
What does this have to do with a DXF file? It’s an jpeg file, but that is ok. You can use PCB Editor / Place / Add Image to put it in the PCB editor. You can also make the picture partly transparent (only shows when the picture is not selected) and you can put it on any layer (Experiment with that, especially when you have multiple pictures).
KiCad does not support a direct reverse workflow, but that is not really needed either, but because of that it does take quite some switching between the schematic and PCB editors. For this it is very handy to have a dual monitor setup, or a big monitor, so you can see both programs at the same time.
The workflow roughly is:
- Add a resistor (or other symbol) to the schematic). (The schematic is always the reference in Kicad).
- Assign a footprint to your symbol.
- Schematic Editor / Tools / Update PCB from Schematic.
- Place the footprint on top of your drawing.
- Start drawing a track to connect the footprint to other footprints.
Normally, you first draw a complete schematic, (maybe you already have that too?) Without the schematic, KiCad does not have a list of connections (called a “netlist”) and normally it won’t let you draw copper tracks between footprints in the PCB editor. You can (temporarily !) disable that with PCB Editor / Route / Interactive Router settings / Allow DRC Violations (You also have to set the Mode to Highlight collisions in the same dialog). But I think I prefer to just fix it in the schematic first:
- Go back to the schematic editor.
- Draw a wire between your resistor, and whatever it connects to.
- Schematic Editor / Tools / Update PCB from Schematic [F8] (again) to add that connection.
This way, you can build up your whole schematic and PCB together. You probably have to create custom footprints for your switches and some other sub tasks, but those are pretty standard procedures.
For the wire bridges, If you want to order the PCB, then just draw it as a two layer PCB with the wire bridges on the top copper layer. Dual layer pcb’s are usually the same price as single layer PCB’s. For home etching, then still use the top layer to draw the wire bridges, but use extra big via’s. Then, after etching the bottom layer, you can use the pads of the vias to solder the wires to.
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I have a dxf of these boards
I have Auto Cad Software
You need to draw the schematic too, as I wrote in my previous post. This does seem like more work, but without the schematic (and the netlist), then KiCad does not know which tracks to keep apart from each other. With the schematic (and terefore the netlist) KiCad knows how to keep the nets apart, and you can specify distances between the tracks etc. It really is a bad idea to attempt to skip this part.
OK, so you do have the schematic. That makes it simpler, because you do not have to reverse engineer it from the PCB. But again, start by creating a KiCad project and entering the schematic. Without the schematic and the netlist, you will be constantly rowing against KiCad’s workflow, you will be wasting time and probably get dissatisfied or frustrated too.
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Is there a way to import the schematic?
KiCad can import schematics from both Eagle and altium, and some other formats too. I assume you only have some drawing in pixel (or maybe vector) format. And best you can do is import it as a drawing as an aid to put real KiCad schematic symbols on top.
If you have done both the schematic and the PCB, then you can use the DRC to check for correctness. If you made an error in either the schematic or the PCB, then DRC will flag the error. That is yet another advantage of going though the whole process including the schematic.
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Help me out on importing. When I open a new schematic it will not allow import a Pixel or Vector file.
Symbol Library
No Capacitors?
No Resistors?
They are under Device.
