Target audience: You have an interest in electronics and have already built some circuits, using prototyping boards or by assembling kits, but never designed a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) yourself.
Stuff to bring: a laptop with KiCAD 9 installed; something to take notes with.
This live KiCAD walkthrough will go through all phases of the KiCAD design flow:
- defining new symbols for parts that are not in KiCAD's part library
- drawing a schematic diagram
- verifying if the schematic conforms to design rules
- drawing a footprint for parts that are not in KiCAD's footprint library
- assigning footprints to all parts
- placing all footprints on a PCB
- manually routing connections between parts on the PCB
- creating ground planes (copper fills) and keep-out zones
- defining an outline for the PCB
- verifying if the PCB design conforms to your schematic AND design rules
- exporting fabrication files
if time permits:
- panelizing designs
The ideal example circuit for the workshop has a about 6 different parts, and about 10 in total, with a mixture of through-hole and surface mounted components. If you have a circuit idea to use as an example: please drop me a note before the workshop. If not, I will think of something else.
Note: This workshop will NOT cover (amongst others):
- Basic electronic design in general
- High current or high voltage designs
- High frequency design including impedance and length matching of traces
- Net classes (unless there is time left)
- Hierarchical sheets and labels
- buses
- 4-or-or-more-layer designs
- Rigid-flex PCBs
- Castellated edges, buried vias, via-in-pad designs
- PCB copper+soldermask+silkscreen artwork or multicolour silkscreen artwork
- PCB antenna's
- using external scripts with KiCAD
Questions are welcome, but some are outside the scope of a beginners workshop, and there will also be some that I can't answer.
Hosts for Printed Circuit Board design for beginners - live KiCAD walkthrough:
Metadata for Printed Circuit Board design for beginners - live KiCAD walkthrough
To be recorded: NoTo be streamed: No
URLs for Printed Circuit Board design for beginners - live KiCAD walkthrough
No URLs found.
Schedule for Printed Circuit Board design for beginners - live KiCAD walkthrough
- Saturday, Jul 19th, 2025, 15:00 (CEST) - Saturday, Jul 19th, 2025, 17:00 (CEST) at Workshop Room