KiCad 101

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Basic Process

  1. start a project. You start by editing a diagram, not the physical layout reality. That is called a schematic. the schematic is later converted into a physical layout.
  2. Drag and drop components into the design
  3. You must then connect them, and verify the design for connection errors.
  4. Once you have the schematic, you can add physical reality to it. This consists of moving components around and rotating them in order to make the easiest connections, adding footprints for components and wire thicknesses. The footprints concept is that any component can come in various packages (or size/shape). We must specify exactly which package we are using.
  5. Once we add packages and wires, we save the layout.
  6. This layout can be converted to manufacturing files, for a CNC circuit mill such as OSE's D3D CNC Circuit Mill, or can be sent out for professional circuit board fabrication.

Videos

Playlist of 5 videos:

Video Notes

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Links