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Awesome to hear of new people getting into PCBs! It's wonderful how accessible PCB design has become, and I think KiCad plays a major role in that. If you're th
by stn8188 3y ago
Awesome to hear of new people getting into PCBs! It's wonderful how accessible PCB design has become, and I think KiCad plays a major role in that. If you're the kind of person who can read to learn stuff, I highly recommend this old powerpoint presentation:
https://www.4pcb.com/media/presentation-how-to-build-pcb.pdf https://www.4pcb.com/media/presentation-how-to-build-pcb.pdf
It describes the manufacturing process in pretty good detail. The reason the design rules feel like such a wall is that these design rules are completely based upon the manufacturing processes themselves (thus different manufacturers will have different rules). As you go through that presentation, you'll probably have to search or ask about many of the terms you don't recognize, but that'll just help you learn even more! Next, check out the design rules for a popular fabricator. For example, here's one:
https://docs.oshpark.com/services/two-layer/ https://docs.oshpark.com/services/two-layer/
And they even include some helpful tips for setting up KiCad to work with their fab capabilities:
https://docs.oshpark.com/design-tools/kicad/ https://docs.oshpark.com/design-tools/kicad/
Two other great resources to learn from are Robert Feranec and the Contextual Electronics course:
https://www.youtube.com/@RobertFeranec https://www.youtube.com/@RobertFeranec
https://contextualelectronics.com/ https://contextualelectronics.com/
Have fun!
- roeles 3y ago> and I think KiCad plays a major role in that I'm not trying to rain on your or KiCad's parade, but what did it for me was EasyEDA's integration with JLCPCB's part library. Combined with JLCPCB's assembly service. For just a bit of extra money I now don't have to worry about footprints, availability, exporting the right files, creating a BOM, etc. I can just order at JLCPCB right from EasyEDA. I really wanted to use KiCad instead of yet another online tool, but for my first steps this just makes more sense.
- stn8188 3y agoCertainly JLC and their EasyEDA integration is a great tool for reducing barriers - absolutely. There are others as well, Eagle for one (maybe even before KiCad got as popular as it is) plus some of the newer tools looks Libre PCB and Horizon. I'm definitely biased towards KiCad, since it's what opened doors for me personally a decade ago.