I have just finished spending days overhauling my site with tutorials, "how to"s, etc: /KiCadHowTo.org
This work is pointless if…
a) I didn’t do it very well… or
b) no one knows about it.
If you think the site has any merit, I would welcome any Facebook likes, Google "+"s, mentions in discussions.
There’s stuff for people just getting started, and stuff for people a little further along. There are “tutorials”, which are best worked through, like going to a training session, and there are definitions, etc, which try to clear up confusions more quickly, directly.
For what version of kicad is your tutorial site. (does not look like version 4 to me.)
This should be easily defected. I would make sure that this information is on all pages somewhere. Preferably somewhere at the top in such a way that it is easily seen.
My project manager looks very different to yours.
http://kicadhowto.wikidot.com/se1main
But i use a nightly build version. I don’t remember how the 4.0.5 stable version looks like but i’m sure it had the same programs as my nightly version: (from left to right)
eeschem
schematic library editor
pcbnew
footprint editor
gerber viewer
bitmap2component
calculator
pl editor (page layout editor)
(I doubt that there ever was a version of kicad which had cvpcb in the main window. But i could be wrong.)
By the way you could contact the maintainers of the kicad website if you want it listed under their tutorials section.
Many thanks for the feedback. When doing the overhaul, I was using vers 4-0-4, on a Windows Win 7 machine.
Versions, are, as you say, a problem.
Different pages of my site are done at different times. As time goes by, and things become dated, if I happen to revisit such a page, and note something that might be a problem for users, I try to comment on KiCad’s evolution. (In fact, it was the big change associated with the storage of footprint descriptions that prompted the big overhall.
In a perfect world, of course a tutorial would use up to date illustrations. But there are only so many hours in the day. I get the sense that users understand this, from notes of thanks that arrive. Better SOMETHING, even if the re may be dated elements, than nothing… but a perfect nothing!
Many concepts (e.g. “What is a schematic?” “What is a layer?” don’t change from version for version), after all.
In some pages I DO say what version I was working with, to reassure someone who is lucky enough to be using EXACTLY the version I am using… and to warn others. Of course the OS, and which version of the OS can matter, too. Again, it is impossible to cover every base, but I try to light a candle, or maybe even two.
Hi. First of all thanks for sharing your knowledge about KiCAD. I think I am pretty much your target audience. I just installed it this week and have no experience with the process of designing a PCB,other than looking at pictures other people have made.
I found your tutorials easy to follow and liked your tone. Some people may not, but I did.
One thing I wanted to ask is that when you talked about updating a design on this page http://kicadhowto.wikidot.com/se1rec you said that you’d have to delete any footprints that you had previously. Being a noob who makes a lot of changes to his schematic, I had to do this a number of times and found that it’s not necessary. There’s a checkbox to manage this behaviour. Might be a new feature.
I’m in the process of getting my head around some fundamentals of electronics as I try to design a PCB for a mechanical keyboard. I’m not at the stage of having a finished layout, but the latter pages of your tutorial will surely come in handy when I am ready to have my PCB made.