Just wondering why you do not use gerbers? I have had no difficulty to follow gerber instructions from JLCPCB and am satisfied with the boards. I had generated the gerbers using 6.0 nightly (version from last December). I admit that my boards had nothing very challenging or unusual.
I would expect that most fab houses would tell you what are their requirements for gerber files?
No issues with gerbers, having issues with the XYRS files with a certain manufacturer. The PCB contains a lot of components therefore I’m looking for convenience here if I can revert back to KiCad 5 with the layout as they support direct upload of the .kicad_pcb file.
Seems to me, a disinterested observer, that either you have to:
Backediting of the generated .kicad_pcb files seems too risky and unlikely to get much interest from code contributors. Unless the fab house does it and guarantees their work.
Native conversion from v6 to earlier version file format will not happen, developers said this several times, I am 100 percent sure. I am sure nobody will write a converter for that also, it is not just so simple, v6 has more features than v5 files (additional pcb objects), such discussions happened several times during v6 developement end ended up with users unable to backport v6 file to v5.
Your solution is to use v6 with gerbers an convince fabhouse to upgrade, this will going to happen, there is no reason to use v5 anymore.
If it’s a turnkey fab and they claim to support KiCad, then they should be able to accept the latest stable version of KiCad.
I do think KiCad is still relatively “small” compared with other PCB programs, so some lag between the still quite new KiCad V6 and those Fabs is understandable.
Instead of (or in addition to) posting here, contact those Fabs and ask them when they think they’ll be ready for KiCad V6.
I asked their technical support, and they have no timeline for the support of the new stable version. I did notice that Aisler has a native plugin now that’s available from within KiCad - maybe check it out.
Thank you. I also reached out to them before I posted here on the forum and they replied with the same.
I have had the same experience. I have used three different turnkey assembly houses that import the native Kicad files, none currently support v6.
Why not just use gerbers? For full turnkey assembly, the XYRS is also needed along with the BOM. Since these full-turnkey assembly houses read the native Kicad board files, it greatly reduces the NRE and therefore total board cost. XYRS and BOM formats are not standard, thus requiring translation either by me or by the vendor. Most automated full turnkey assembly houses take Eagle, Kicad, ODB++, and Altium.
Why aren’t they moving to support v6 if they had v5 support? Of the two full turnkey assembly houses I have talked to, they have prioritized support of IPC-2581 ahead of Kicad v6 support. I understand why they would do this, instead of keeping up with each CAD tools latest changes. Ultimately, this is an artifact of not having an industry standard for the full board package, but it sounds like everyone is betting on IPC-2581 moving forward.
As someone who uses Kicad for commercial development. IPC-2581 support is now the single feature that would make the biggest impact on our workflow.
This is why you wait some time before you use a new version of a software. As a professional designer (simple designs, but i get paid for it) i will wait a few more months before i update from KiCad 5 to KiCad 6 for productivity use.
The same goes for any other software: Don’t use file formats that can’t be read by stable software that isn’t out for at least 1 year. Not waiting some time is not smart.
As for the production files: If possible, try to use standards that can be read by multiple different programs. Gerber and a simple pick and place format should be used where possible.
Luckily, ipc-2581 a.k.a. DPMX is under work. It was already planned for v6 and has been postponed, but it fits very well with the vision of KiCad to compete with professional big corporate EDAs.
Gerber already supports about anything needed for “full board package”, the problem is its history which has caused a situation where many features aren’t supported by manufacturing software, and especially cheap manufacturers use old software. I don’t have any first hand experience or knowledge, but I suppose that those who implement dpmx export or import automatically support the “whole package”, while they don’t think about Gerber the same way. And nobody can stop them saying they support Gerber, even when they would support only small and old subset.
This is true, the Gerber X3 does contain all the information for a full turnkey assembly (PCB layers + Position + BOM), and it has been supported in Kicad for a while (which is great). Unfortunately, I think X3 came out too late as IPC-2581/DPMX had already gain momentum. Currently, I have not been able to find any assembly house that will quote Gerber X3 files. I think EuroCircuits (who helped define X3) will quote full turnkey, but I don’t believe they ship to the USA.
I have suffered same encounter and I am a regular user of this manufacturing firm. Maybe they are working on it. I really believe in them. Currently as I wait for them to resolve the issue i did the order through Register - PCBWay and it was completed and delivered successfully.
I did try the Aisler plugin, which works with Kicad v6. They are a Kicad sponsor and the plugin uploaded the PCB with parts and generated a full turnkey quote. I have not ordered anything from them yet, but the workflow seems to work with v6 pretty smoothly. I did have to make sure the manufacturer part number attribute in Eeschema was labeled as “MPN” for it to pull the BOM in correctly.
Just as a heads up, we reached out to Macrofab back in March 2021 to apprise them of the new board format and see if we could help get them up to speed. It was a good conversation but apparently they haven’t gotten there yet.
We did the same for other vendors who ingest KiCad format files (OSHPark, Eurocircuits, etc)
If you have a choice in who you support, Aisler is an excellent choice. They are a KiCad sponsor and help to support our development with every board order. They also make excellent boards.
Would it be hard to have a kicad command line interface with an arguement to take a pcb file and generate gerber and drill files?
This is going to be implemented for v7.
You might like to look at KiKit which offers this sort of functionality. Currently supporting jlcpcb, pcbway and oshpark.
I was thinking this would be nice for PCB vendors. The plot function works for me. Just need to zip the files.
Well, as a follow up, MacroFab (no affiliation other than I have used them in the past) just announced they now support Kicad 6. Thanks to the Kicad developers and especially users. I think there is enough critical mass that the user base is getting more noticed and makes an impact on the bottom line.
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