I am a new user if KiCad .. It seems a very good software, not expensive like prof-softwares and very powerfull !
I succeed to make a schematic with several devices. It works fine, better than my old previous software (Isis Lite).
However, I am a bit disapointed when I printed the schematic (A4). The borderlines are ok on the sheet but the devices are very small, It’s difficult to read the pins number for example.
I think I prefer less devices on a sheet, but easier to read !
Is there a way to setup the zoom on the printed page ?
I have created a “simple” page layout (simple.kicad_wks) and in that I have removed the whole double border line and shrunk the title block. As a result you can still put a reasonable amount of schematic on an A5 sheet, and then “zoom to fit” while printing. A similar option is to stay with an A4 sheet, but then scale it to fit on two pages and glue them together after printing.
Even you change the setting paper A4, A5, … the size of every component is the same, difficult to read, with the age ..
The only way I found, is to setting the paper to A5 landscape, drawing my schematic in A5 mode, and…. make a copy screen..
The I open this copyscreen with Photoshop for example and print it resizing in A4. It’s a pity but the only way I found… Perhaps I didn’t discovered the right way !
It seems incredible that a fabulous software such KiCad does not allow to set the size of our drawing at the beginning. We must be able to resize ! Suppose we draw a poor 555 with a blinking led or a whole complex motherboard ! Our poor 555 will seem lost in the center of the A4 page !
I think one of the corporate users paying a license fee of $100,000 per year needs to make the request.
Seriously, what features to include in Kicad and what to leave to outside programs is always a debate. Some people think Kicad should be an almost complete mechanical cad for drawing. Mostly it comes down to what do people really need to complete a board. There are a lot of features that the small core staff of volunteers that have a higher priority. What WE think is easy to implement may have major ramifications to other parts of the program or may not be all that easy to implement. That’s why there is a thriving plug in community effort.
Hi Daniel, welcome to KiCad! The easiest way is to increase symbol/text sizes in Preferences and use multiple hierarchical sheets. Also, export to PDF and scale when printing much clearer than cramming everything on one A4.
Default pin pitch for schematic symbols is 2.54mm (a.k.a 100 mil) and that results in quite small text indeed. For printed text, the normal line height is 4 to 4.5mm, so even if you scale an A5 sheet and print it on A4, text will still be a bit smaller then “regular printed text”.
Also, KiCad’s font is not the best for readability. You can try to use a few other fonts to see if they’re better readable. I very rarely print anything these days. I’ve got a big 107cm 4k monitor, and have gotten use to doing nearly everything with my computer.
