I CNC mill more Single-Sided PCB’s than I care to admit and, when possible, I prefer using Jumper-Wires in lieu of making Double-Sided boards.
Graphic layouts can be helpful and, having No effect on circuits or PCB manufacture, jumpers can overlay on top of Ratsnest lines (in PCB layout) thus adding a missing link to layout concepts.
Attached zip file contains several Jumper-Wire footprints (.mod and Step files) for PCB:
8mm, 12mm 20mm 25mm, 30mm, 50mm
The File: JumperWires.zip (141.7 KB)
• Double-Click the Pads to change them (as usual, either on your PCB or by Editing the footprint)
• The jumpers (length, shape and color) belong to the Step file and are not editable unless done outside of Kicad
• In footprint edit, you can raise/lower elevation but, the ends will always be long (done to enable placing over other items)
In real usage, you’ll bend and place jumper wires as needed thus, can ignore graphic collisions
They are Not perfect but meet ‘my’ needs. You can design your own (see tutorials)
As long as you don’t have crossing jumper wires, another technique to use for single sided boards is to use the traces on the top layer (component side) as documentation on where to put jumpers. Also, use vias that are appropriately sized for the gauge wire you use for the jumpers. I suppose you could also do something similar with a 2 sided board and use an inner layer pair to show where to put jumper wires. Only send the two outer layers to fabrication as a 2 layer board even though it was designed in KiCad as a 4 layer board. But this technique looses the 3D models and if you want non-orthagonal jumper wires one has to remember to toggle free-angle routing when switching layers.
@BlackCoffee Thank you for taking time to display your PCBs using 3, 7, and 4 blue jumper wires. I hadn’t seen this technique used before. I have added it to mental my “bag of tricks” for PCB development, test, and revision.
Thanks for sharing the files! I also use wire jumpers on 2-layer layouts wherever traces cross and I don’t want to break the reference plane. I had wished KiCAD had built-in wire jumpers that you can put them in on the fly during routing a trace so that they don’t go into schematic and break the nets. I’m new and still on my first kiCAD layout design. So far I had to use TH resistors as jumpers.
