How do people handle cases when you need to design a very large PCB that does not fit onto one drawing sheet (A4/Letter or even A3/Ledger)?
KiCAD seems to have fixed 1:1 scale between PCB dimensions and drawing sheet dimensions, there is no way to downscale the drawing so that it fits a smaller sheet.
KiCAD’s PCB Editor does not seem to have a concept of multiple sheets like Schematic Editor does, so I can’t span the big board across multiple drawing sheets.
My only remaining option is to increase the drawing sheet size (let’s say from A4 to A3 or from Letter to Ledger if you are in the US), but this has its own limitations: first of all, this limits the number of printers I can use to print the drawing out and also at some point one might need a PCB that does not fit into A3, then what, use A2 plotter?)
Actually, I don’t even need a ridiculously large PCB to hit the limit of A4/Letter - consider a relatively small board and then try adding all supplemental information onto the drawing’s User.Comments layer like board stackup table, board info and custom assembly instructions. Sure you can put it over the PCB drawing and then hide User.Comments layer, but it would be so much better if this could be always visible and just printed on a separate drawing sheet.
Am I missing something?
Just to be clear, I am not asking about multiple PCBs requiring multiple drawing sheets like it was asked many times before in this forum, I am asking about single PCB requiring multiple sheets.
Hi. Just a thought, why dont you chose whatever size you need to complete your schematic (A3 to A0). Plot to a PDF then, when printing, chose to scale to fit withkn your print settings.
Might be an option until a ‘proper’ solution is posted
If you use a larger drawing sheet, most printers can downscale the output to the size of the media.
Or just hide the drawing sheet and forget it exists. It’s pretty much useless and makes it harder to upscale a smaller PCB so it fills a page when printed.
I have customized the drawing sheet for my own projects. I removed the whole border, and also shrunk the title block to around half it’s original size. I still like to see a project name and date on a printout but for the rest I don’t care about the drawing sheet. If anything, it’s more of a nuisance then a benefit.
At the moment (Still using KiCad V8) working with custom page layouts is also not (yet) ideal. The drawing sheet is not saved in the project. Ans as a result, if someone else opens such a project on another computer, KiCad will complain about a missing page layout, and then substitute the default page layout again.
I also very rarely make a printout of a PCB. A few years ago I bought a 4k monitor with an 107cm diagonal, and that was a very good investment.
In days long gone by I also sometimes made printouts of mechanical drawings on multiple A4 pages, and then glued or taped the pages together.
I did’t designed the large PCB ever, but before first time installing KiCad V4 I have read all KiCad pdfs and decided that I want to have 0,0 point in the middle of my PCB. So I edited the frame (I knew it is possible only thanks to those pdfs) to have no frame. The frame file couldn’t be empty so I left small cross at 0,0…
Since then (2017) I am all the time working out of sheet so don’t know about anything limiting me to sheet size.
The example you can see here:
I see you have to press [Read more] button to see all what I have written there.
Because of this I always copy the drawing sheet into the project directory. Then it’s saved and archived together with the project.
Drawback: you can’t change the original drawing sheet and expect to affect all projects. (which is the characteristic of central managed working sheets), because now every project works with it’s own local dws file.
If you update to v9 you may also check the new feature to embed the dws file directly into the project. This stores a copy of the dws file into the board and/or schematic file.
regarding the original question:
Just use a drawing sheet big enough for your board and additional comments. Then use the printer driver to divide the ploit into different pages (can for instance be done with pdf editors).
There is currently no “multi-sheet” support available in kicad, and AFAIK there is also no feature request open regarding such a feature.
I for myself was influenced by Piotr and also work without a “real” drawing sheet, my dws file also consists only of a marking cross at 0,0 position. (differently to piotr I don’t place this 0,0 position in the middle of the board, but at the bottem left corner).
My linux distribution is getting out of date. If I’ve upgraded that, I will install KiCad V9, and maybe experiment with the embedded page layout.
I have standardized in incorporating the position (127, 127 [mm]) as a reference on the PCB. I do not use a corner of the PCB for this, because of production tolerances (V-Grooving is not a good reference). Instead I use one of the mayor parts as a reference, for example the center of pin1 of a THT connector.
I am also aware of Piotr’s method, and I quite like it, but I also want a basic title block with info such as a project name and date. I’m now wondering whether creating both a schematic symbol and a footprint for a title block is a good idea. The goal is to make it look similar to KiCad’s native titleblock (use text variables for the info)
Yes indeed. It’s the limitations of the physical world. The PCB is always drawn 1:1 scale in the PCB editor, to ease the output of Gerbers and other artwork, but how you do printing is not so relevant. You can either scale to page, or print on multiple pages and glue something together. If you are very much into big PCB’s you can even consider buying a large format printer. A3 is still quite affordable. Up to A0 may be reachable, and the largest I have ever seen was a single canvas of around 6m by 12m. I have no idea how that was made but apparently there are printing services who can make such a thing, but in context with KiCad it’s a bit ridiculous. Even larger then A3 is unlikely, although a lot of PCB manufacturers can make PCB’s of around 400 by 550mm in their standard process.
OK, pardon me pushing back on your argumentation, but…
The argument of “it is a limitation of a physical world” does not seem to hold water because by the same logic architects would be required to draw and print life-size architectural charts of skyscrapers and for them, not even A2, A1 or A0 would help. Same applies to mechanical engineers - every CAD drawing out there does have a “SCALE 1:X” field in the drawing sheet title block to enable people to draw and print things like a cargo ship propeller on realistically sized pieces of paper.
Additionally, I work in regulated industry and how I do printing is extremely relevant. I must produce readily-printable design documents for archival and audit purposes. While I myself can surely downscale during printing on the printer driver level and I am also equipped with an A3-capable color laser printer and even a plotter, not every external auditor that I might have to send the design documentation to in future is guaranteed to have the same wealth of equipment. So now I am forced to downscale while printing to a virtual PDF printer, which is a manual operation (because even KiCAD v9 does not allow to automate downscaling when generating PDFs despite actually introducing long-awaited josets for generating fabrication documents in automated manner), and manual operations are frowned upon in regulated industries due to the human factor. Interestingly, there is a dropdown control for specifying scaling in PDF job settings, but it is always disabled (see picture below)
Because it is destined to be used for designing both very, very small things and very, very large things so practically can’t define area with fixed scale for all its use (enough big and enough accurate at the same time).
2^32 = 4.295E9 so using standard 32bit numbers for X and Y you can define 4x4m area with 1um accuracy. PCB technology is about 1mils (25um) accurate so having 1um accuracy in design is more than enough. I have also never heard of any factory manufacturing bigger than 4x4m PCBs.
So what for to use scale if using typical 32bit integer numbers you can describe everything you need.
Efficiency (how fast it is working) is certainly important KiCad factor. If all coordinates will have to be scaled all the time than even this is simple task for computer it can slow down some operations enough to bother the user (imagine how many things program have to calculate when you are routing a track with pushing 16 other tracks when from time to time some of them even have to jump on the other sides of pads they are pushed on).
Output jobs are are a relatively new feature in KiCad. The main limitation for KiCad is the amount of time available from the people who are developing it. It’s very easy to interpret your complaint of the current limitations of output jobs in a negative way. And when people start seeing your post from that point of view, they usually ignore it and move on. It is quite common for KiCad to start with a minimal viable implementation of some feature, and then extend it’s capabilities over time. Having predetermined scale factor for a printing job seems a logical improvement. It’s so obvious that my first guess is that there is already a feature request for it on gitlab. If not, then you can create it yourself.
KiCad also has a limitation of one PCB per project, and thus also one PCB file / sheet per project. This may change in the future, but it’s probably going to take years. There are > 1000 feature requests on gitlab, and big ones such as this take a lot of time. However, the KiCad project is open for sponsoring to get priority development for some feature, but it does have to fit in the overall direction that the developers want KiCad to go. And what use would printing the documenation on another page of the PCB editor? Once it’s decoupled from the PCB, there are much better ways to create and organize documentation.
If this (together with “automated workflow”) is your requirement then it could be that Kicad actually is not suited for your usecase.
Interestingly, there is a dropdown control for specifying scaling in PDF job settings, but it is always disabled (see picture below).
The plot dialog window is shared between all file formats for the plot output. The scaling option is implemented for Postscript + HPGL, but disabled for all other file formats (including pdf).
Currently open gitlab issues regarding related to the pdf output:
