Jobset for image capture in PCB editor

Community Feature Request Chat
1

I like to share my boards with my team members, customers and managers by putting my files in a version control and publish this on Gitlab, Bitbucket, Github… etc. These platforms support readme files that get displayed on the front page.

I typically put a picture of the board, from a screen capture along with a 3D render and of the schematics on this page for quick overview for others I can generate pretty much everything i need with jobset. Except i cannot generate a good image of the board layout. So my question is

  • Is it possible to generate a screen capture of the pcb editor view via some scripting that the jobset triggers?
  • Would it be possible to get a SVG or PDF plot that more closely resembles what I am seeing in the view port?
2

you can export both .pdf and .svg files of the pcb as well as 3d rendering using jobsets:

image
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3

Perhaps the kicad-cli can do some magic.

For every project I have a set of commands that I run to generate Gerbers, BOM, PDFs etc. using python and the kicad-cli. As an example this is my command for generating a PDF of the PCB placement:

kicad-cli.exe pcb export pdf --output <your output_file> --layers Edge.Cuts,F.Fab,F.Silkscreen --include-border-title --crossout-DNP-footprints-on-fab-layers --drill-shape-opt 0 --mode-single <your input_file>

Here is information about all the options:

KiCad Command-Line Interface | master | English | Documentation | KiCad

4

Yes i am aware that i can export a PDF and SVG but it odes not look as informative as a screenshot I also would want to see the pad numbers, zone polygons, have similar transparency on layers etc. I don’t want fabrication outputs as such. just closer to what it looks like on screen.

But if you can guide me how i can get the default PDF looking closer to whats on screen then I am all ears.

5

Doesn’t KiCanvas or InteractiveHtmlBom suffice for your use case?

(you can run Python scripts from jobsets)

1 Like
6

Well no, they don’t full fill my need for a overview that is supported by the readme doc.

I can screen capture in python. But how do i move the view port to a saved location with pyhon?

See the image on the left is more informative than image on the right Because i can see through the board, so i can see bottom layer etc

plot
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