Intro
Imagine, you've built a few electronics projects. Perhaps soldered a few kits, with all the parts and a ready made Printed Circuit Board (PCB) included, maybe a few projects on a breadboard with Dupont wires, perhaps even with an arduino, and maybe you even realized a design of your own on a raster board. Now you want to proceed to the next level: Create your own professional looking printed circuit board. So you looked at what tools are available that are both free as in free beer AND free as in freedom, and no doubt you have come across a program called KiCAD.
KiCAD is a professional quality PCB design suite.
Starting with KiCAD
Starting with KiCAD can be daunting. You'll have to learn a new vocabulary. You'll have to learn a bit about generic PCB manufacturing technology. You'll have to learn how to deal with the capabilities and requirements of a specific PCB manufacturer, and how to work these into a design that can actually be manufactured. But most importantly, you will have to learn how KiCAD works and adopt a certain workflow.
This workshop =
We will start with a presentation to introduce The goals of the workshop, Concepts, Vocabulary and a Workflow. Then you will have some time to install KiCAD on your device (BYOD).
After this the workshop will guide you through the process of making a basic double side PCB design from start to finish:
- Create a project
- Enter a schematic with symbols and the connections between them.
- Select footprints for each of the parts
- Create an outline for your PCB
- Place the footprints on the PCB
- Draw the wiring between parts
- Next you will generate the files that you can send to your PCB manufacturer to actually make your PCBs.
Besides this basic tutorial, there are "side trails" explaining how to add symbols to your own symbol library, how to add footprints to your own footprint library, how to verify schematic designs, how to set design rules for a project, how to verify PCB designs, how to add power planes, how to use KICAD to make multiple PCBs in one project and how to use KiCAD to create PCB's with more than two layers.
NOTES
This workshop is a walk-through, creating a small PCB design from start to finish. There are NO lecture notes or manual - it is your own responsibility to follow the workshop through, ask questions and make notes as you deem necessary. It may be useful to do the workshop in couples - with one PC per pair.
The main goal is "to make a PCB design for an electronic circuit using KiCAD", NOT "to design an electronic circuit", NOR "compare KiCAD to $OTHER_DESIGN_TOOL")
Unless there are other ideas that are manageable within the time we have (please come see me before the show) the subject will be to design a simple board containing two relays with associated discrete transistor drivers (for Galvanically isolated outputs) and two optocouplers for inputs.