How do i tell kicad that i want nothing on the top and the traces on the bottom. I teach soldering and unsoldering techniques to technicians. they must place the through hole componente on an astable oscillator circuit and flip it over to solder all the through pins to the copper traces. But kicad seems to insist that both sides are copper. Can I work around this?
The through holes will have annular copper rings on top and bottom, but besides that there is no reason you can’t just draw traces on the bottom copper layer and only plot the bottom layer for gerber and use it without the top copper.
I don’t really get what your problem is… have any screenshot to look at for us?
How do you use KiCAD, ie. how is your process from placing components, drawing copper traces and then getting the boards?
Where is the problem?
oscillator.docx (97.5 KB)
downloaded kicad. first time using this kind of software. to have the boards built bare (no components, no silkscreen) I have to provide the gerber files. Trying to get the layout I need when the layers are all predefined, but i don’t think I need them… So do I just lie up the components on top layer and do the traces on the bottom layer, but both layers are called copper so I don’t know how to tell the program that I don"t need two copper layers
I’m a noob too, but I think that you can simply select the bottom layer, arrow point to B.cu on the far right of the PCB new screen, and start tracing. By default the traces on the bottom layer are drawn in green, those on the top Layer (F.cu) are drawn in red.
[quote=“stewart1, post:3, topic:1557, full:true”]
oscillator.docx (97.5 KB)
downloaded kicad. first time using this kind of software. to have the boards built bare (no components, no silkscreen) I have to provide the gerber files. Trying to get the layout I need when the layers are all predefined, but i don’t think I need them… So do I just lie up the components on top layer and do the traces on the bottom layer, but both layers are called copper so I don’t know how to tell the program that I don"t need two copper layers [/quote]
Check with the company who will fabricate your boards to find out what layers are required to manufacture a board. They may need a Gerber for the top copper layer even if it has no traces. The solder mask layers, for example, are required for fabrication but you will probably never touch them in KiCAD. You can treat the “unnecessary” copper layer the same way. If you want a board with traces on only one side, then don’t draw any traces on the other side. (But when you are finished with your layout, visually inspect the unnecessary copper layer to make sure you didn’t accidentally put something there.)
KiCAD lets you specify the number of copper layers on a board, but the minimum is two. The default footprints (also called “pad stacks”) for through-hole parts will have the copper “donut” on both sides, and I don’t think you can change this. You can manually remove (edit) the pad out of the final Gerber file, but this may cause problems for the company that makes your boards. I don’t know of any board fabricators who routinely make a true one-sided board, though I’m sure they can be done as special orders.
The atch screenshot may help you set up PCBNew for this project.
Dale
As Joan_Sparky already pointed out, just develop as if you’re doing a 2-sided board, but when you fabricate you do not produce (or you ignore) the unwanted layers when you produce the Gerber plots. The only other thing to remember is never place tracks on the Top layer. If you wish you can also switch off the visibility of the top copper layer while laying out the board.