related guides: KiCad intro |
kicad schematic editing |
kicad schematic, to netlist, to layout |
kicad: new parts |
kicad: pcb layout
also, post questions in our soldering forum
also, post questions in our soldering forum
Tutorials for KiCad - A Free Open Source Schematic and PCB Layout Editor
Intro:
This set of tutorials will cover some essentials to designing circuits and pcb layouts using kicad (link goes to author's site + download), an open-source tool for circuit (board) design that's free and has no restrictions on number of layers or size (like Eagle). We'll focus more on the unintuitive things as well as tips & tricks rather than re-write the manual.
I really appreciate the time and effort you are putting in to write this tutorial. I have never been a fan of pure web page documentation (the fonts that appear in this tutorial are an example of why). So, this is not criticism, Lord knows I doubt I’d do better. Rather, I’d like to suggest a document format such as Open Office that could then be printed to PDF format. Part of the reason for this suggestion is that I find printing out the tutorial while I work on it is more productive than constantly switching between windows. Granted a dual monitor setup is better suited, but I am not in a position to set up dual monitors. So, for what it’s worth.
You should be able to print straight from the web page, let us know if it comes out garbled, we should be able to provide a css style that prints nicely.
Do you have a recommended font? Maybe something isn’t loading correctly… a screen shot would be helpful. support at curiousinventor.com
As for the lack of pdf… part of the reason for making the tutorials on this site (in addition to saving people some of the frustrations we went through), is to generate a little traffic, and a pdf floating around in cyber space doesn’t do that. Let us know if we can make things more printable (everything on one page, different fonts, etc.).
thanks for the feedback.
Hi,
Very cool to see this tutorial—great to see people promoting KiCad in a practical way.
I hadn’t realised there was a PDF with the footprints on it and the “space bar to zero out the relative coordinates” was also news to me. So, thanks. :-)
FWIW I prefer the tutorial being available as web pages rather than a PDF.
I’ve added your tutorial to the KiCad notes page on my site. I hope you continue with this tutorial.
—Phil.
thanks for link and for the work getting it to run on OS X… I think we’ll add a resources page to this tutorial that has links to your listing and OS X builds, as well as other tutorials.
(complete instructions)