Manufacturing files generating script

Salamandar · October 28, 2019, 3:59pm

Hi everyone,
I wrote a script that generates everything needed :

Gerber
Drill Map
Position file

It awaits either :

No argument : It automatically detects the existing kicad_pcb in the working directory
Multiple files : generates gerber for each file.

It also generates a zip file to directly send it to the fab.

All comments are welcome ! Feel free to reuse/modify

Salamandar

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/Salamandar/7162bcb9f0eeb31028aaa052a779a025

kicad_generate_gerber.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
# Salamandar <felix@piedallu.me> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
# can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
# this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Félix Piédallu
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

import sys

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tiagogala · October 30, 2019, 9:55am

Awesome! I was just looking for something like this.
I will test it right away

tiagogala · October 30, 2019, 11:21am

Just a quick comment: the KiCad python interpreter still uses python2.
This means that the script is imported to KiCad’s python console, it will crash when opening files for write (because of open(..., newline=''). Removing the newline part seems to do the trick.

Anyway, good job!

Salamandar · October 30, 2019, 12:10pm

Not anymore it does not !
If your distro-provided build is still using Py2, please ask the maintainers to add the CMake build flag KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=ON.

About the Py2 compatibility, removing newline may create an odd (but correct) CSV file. According to the internet, you can use :

import io
io.open(…, newline='')

Rene_Poschl · October 30, 2019, 12:33pm

KiCad on windows sadly requires python 2.

tiagogala · October 30, 2019, 12:39pm

OK, let me rephrase that: the nightly version for my OS (macOS) uses python2. I wasn’t aware of different versions of python in different versions of kicad. My bad.

@Rene_Poschl, do you know if it also applies for macOS?

Thanks!

Salamandar · October 30, 2019, 12:53pm

I was a bit trolly in this message I know some platforms are not fully py2 compatible, as the py3 port is very new. (To be honest I didn’t even think about MacOS)
Was newline the only change required for python 2 ?

tiagogala · October 30, 2019, 2:31pm

No problem
Yeah, by changing those 2 lines everything worked OK.

system · January 28, 2020, 2:31pm

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