I am very new to KiCAD with years of experience in Eagle.
In KiCAD, is it possible to create many schematic files (and PCBs) under a KiCAD project? For example I have a project named “high power SMPS”. Under this project I need to have many schematic and PCBs like: main PCB, control PCB, sensing PCB…
For each schematic, of course, there will be a corresponding PCB. In addition to that there will be many versions of each PCB, say, main PCB1, main PCB2 etc. Is it possible? I am unable to locate this in KiCAD 8.0. It is a basic requirement and I think the latest versions
KiCad is currently limited to one PCB per project. There are various workarounds, but none are official supported. You can have multiple schematic sheets in a hierarchical project, but normally all parts are still on the same PCB.
There are some plugins that can help. KiKit can help with panelization, and the Kivar plugin can help wit creating variants of the same PCB, but I do not have experience with them.
Not really. Many people are using KiCad at the moment, and a lot of them are quite happy with KiCad. But I do agree that integrated support for multiple PCB’s in a project will be an advantage.
In the simplest workaround form, you can include both the male and female connectors that connect the PCB’s to each other in the schematic. You also have to make sure there are no nets crossing this gap, so net names have to have different names on these connectors, or you can work with local labels on a separate sheet for the second PCB.
There is also nothing preventing you from drawing two PCB outlines, but they will be in the same relative position on the gerber output. Creating a panel that encloses both these PCB’s is an option.
And there are more workarounds, and although none are ideal, overall it’s mostly workable at the moment.
Not for most home and commercial users. Most PCBs are assembled individually and the PCB makers prefer to place the various Gerber plots separately to make best use of the PCB sheets unless you are buying large quantities
Actually when working with many projects I came across this requirement. For example our inverter PCB have a main PCB. In the main PCB there are 6 driver PCBs, one control PCB. So under this project I need to create a main PCB (and many versions of this: main PCB1, main PCB2…). Then I need to make a driver PCB (again many versions driver PCB1, driver PCB2…). Similarly for the control PCB. A finished PCB will look something like this:
There is nothing wrong or difficult for making separate KiCad projects for the “Driver PCB” and the “Control PCB”. Then also make footprints for these PCB’s and add them to the “Main PCB”.
Yes. It is not impossible to create seperate project for each schematic-PCB pair. But if you have 3 versions of main PCB, 5 versions of driver PCB and 4 versions of control PCB then you will gave 3+5+4 = 12 projects. I think that is very annoying.
I have found incredible features in KiCAD that paid software like Eagle are not offering. KiCAD is very professional. But the issue I pointed out seems to be a…
I am attaching a screen shot of PCB and schematic files under a project in Eagle:
The only difference is the organization. Both, eagle&kicad, don’t really support multi-pcb assembling. (unlike the newest eagle/fusion development have added that feature, I stopped with eagle v7.7.ultimate) with netlist/DRC across multiple pcb.
The eagle project manager just allows to add multiple pcb/schematics to the project tree.
In kicad you will have to do this manually: Norton commander–>create a suitable directory structure:
SMPS
main_pcb_v1
main_pcb_v2
main_pcb_v3
control_board_v1
control_board_v2
control_board_v3
IGBT_driver_left
IGBT_driver_right
The kicad project explorer doesn’t shows the other subsprojects, but for this task the OS file manager (or any other file manager) can be used.
out of interest (because it’s seldom to meet other power developers): which power range you are talking about? (our typical developments are in the range 1kW…20kW)
If program keeps track that when you change pin assignment in main board schematic than in all control boards schematic appropriate changes are made than it is important that program keeps track of all control boards. But if not (I have never used Eagle and don’t know its possibilities) then I don’t see the difference between:
having 12 schematics and 12 PCBs and one project, and
having 12 schematics and 12 PCBs and 12 projects organising them in pairs.
If I imagine that each schematic can be multi sheet than I would don’t know how to manage it all in one project.
