As I understand it, it is not yet possible to natively draw circular/rounded tracks in Pcbnew. Is it however possible to replicate this by using a finite amount of (x,y) coordinates generated in say python and some sort of scripting.
I’ve seen some stuff regarding some pcbnew module via python but can’t seem to find a place to install it. I’m working on Windows which might be part of the problem.
You don’t need to install it, it comes with kicad (at least on platforms where scripting is enabled, windows is one of them). Maybe you don’t have it because you have installed kicad from one of the packages that had scripting disabled by accident, in that case just install latest 5.0.2 release.
Also don’t use standalone python if you have that, use python packaged with kicad. Otherwise you will have to tweak %PYTHONPATH% and it’s not guaranteed to work.
hmmm… maybe I’m getting somewhere. I do have python 3.7 on my pythonpath which seems to be interfering but when I execute
./KiCad/bin/python.exe -i import pcbnew does seem to work. And so does:
brd = pcbnew.LoadBoard('test.kicad_pcb")
Now I just have to figure out how to actually use it. I’m looking for the docs, but can’t seem to find the method brd.DrawTrack([x1,y1],[x2,y2]) or equivalent. Any suggestions.
Here is a simple example:
import pcbnew
board = pcbnew.BOARD()
track = pcbnew.TRACK(board)
track.SetStart(pcbnew.wxPoint(40000000, 40000000))
track.SetEnd(pcbnew.wxPoint(60000000, 40000000))
track.SetWidth(1000000)
board.Add(track)
track = pcbnew.TRACK(board)
track.SetStart(pcbnew.wxPoint(50000000, 30000000))
track.SetEnd(pcbnew.wxPoint(50000000, 50000000))
track.SetWidth(1000000)
board.Add(track)
board.Save('board.kicad_pcb')
This yields following result
General approach in pcbnew scripting is to create elements, set their properties and add them to the board. Track has many more methods best place to learn how to script stuff is to look at pcbnew source:
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