I’m a hobby user, but I succeed to manufacture several PCB with Chinese manufacturers thanks to KICAD. My new project is to make a board using JLCPCB assembly. On this board, I have a NodeMCU ESP32. I want JLCPCB put some female Pin Headers in place of the ESP. But I have no clue how to design that due to the 2 rows of Pin Headers instead of one component. Is there a way to achieve that easily and generate all the files with the JLCPCB plugin?
If someone can put me on the way, I have browsed the internet without success.
Thanks a lot
Christophe
For your ESP32 schematic symbol you need to associate the footprint for the two sets of headers. If you don’t have the correct footprint simply create one.
Open the footprint for a single row header save it to a personal library then edit it to add the second row making sure all the pin numbers correspond to what you have for your ESP32 symbol.
I have never ordered anything from JLCPCB but do this way it will not be a problem to specify 2 sockets while you have one symbol and one footprint (and positions to assemble these sockets)?
In such case I would probably:
do a ESP32 footprint containing no pads but only graphic pad (or only pad 1) position information,
two separate symbols for two separate ESP32 pin rows with pin-header footprints attached to them,
at schematic I would connect everything to these 2 separate symbols (that can be positioned along two ESP32 symbol sides so even a signal names staying in ESP32 symbol could be used (these pins in ESP32 symbol should be replaced with only texts or may be pins of something like No-connected type),
ESP32 symbol at schematic will give me its footprint at PCB.
Than at PCB ESP32 footprint will be only to know where to correctly locate pin-headers. There should be a way to inform JLCPCB that ESP32 symbol at schematic have no corresponding element to be assembled (like mounting holes being at schematic).