KiCad Basics. Don't be afraid to design your own PCB.

hi this is Steve you 6wz let's talk about making some fancy dancy PCB boards on a program called kicad some of you may have know may know that I've uploaded recently a number of different videos for various projects like low impedance 2 and 50 109 amplifiers some high impedance amplifiers some phase box and antenna switching boards and even for my beverages the termination and feed boxes I've used these boards as well what I want to do is not provide a step-by-step instruction on how the kicad program works but just show the flow of how the program works you know going from a project design live with the schematic through the PCB design itself and ultimately ordering the board you know it's really easy to use look I'm not an engineer I'm a geologist and one evening I downloaded this program it's a free program and by the end of the next day I had my first my first circuit board ready to go so it's really a simple program some of you might say well why even bother I mean well the truth of it is for me many of the projects I'm making here I don't really need I don't even need the projects it's kind of for me like guys that build furniture I just like to make them and it's it's a lot of fun you know in the old days what I used to do and maybe like some of you guys did too of course you know you'd self at your board you know kind of like this where you'd have a copper clad board and using an indelible mark or mark out the traces and and you know exit and ferric chloride you know it's it's more than a little bit ugly especially when you got a complex circuit you know whereas you know with these with kicad you know it you can use a two layer well I'm using a two layer board I mean heck you can even use a four layer board but you know what it's it's really your end up with a really nice professional product anyway let's get started show you how this thing works find your way and navigate to the kicad website google that to find it's pretty easy to to locate interesting story these guys are you know it's been a bit of a history of development of this program but lately it's been the guys at CERN have been very involved with developing this and it's been you know a great resource and it's free entirely a free download so anyway go to your download download section and download the program and you'll notice heck they looks like they've got lots of different OSS that it can can work with in my case I'm using it on Windows so after you've done that what you'll do then is open up the kicad program and start a new project you open a new what's called a new project I call this blank project and then what you'll do is open up the schematic window it's just it's called an S schema file and you'll you'll double click that and that opens up the schematic window now what you want to do have already done this a few of them already but then what you want to do is place your component so I'm let's just let's suppose I have the schematic in front of me here and I figure I can I need about you know five or six resistors you press place and then you place a symbol and when you when you press the most in the cursor you get a library comes up and you can select a whole bunch of symbols in this case i typed in transistor and found a transistor so you know I can place a transistor and you can click up there load what else could we do let's let's say we want to place a ground port so that would be a power port and you can scroll the library is quite comprehensive there's quite a few symbols in here a ground okay we'll select that post a grant a plata ground here and I can duplicate it and put another one here and so what I tend to do what I find to be handy is I'll just have you know populate you know most of the components that I need you know perhaps I need say a capacitor so I'll click in here and find a capacitor so type button you know pass it tour you know and then I'll come up there'll be a bunch of symbols here you know the small Poe you know this is an unpolarized capacitor for example so I can pop that in you know maybe do maybe I need a few more than that so I'll duplicate it and put another one in here now another thing I can do of course which is which is important is you know perhaps I need to rotate this so I can set the orientation and rotate it clockwise so they're all in a and a part of the position I want and ultimately once you get your components in place you'll do what's called place a wire and you know it's really simple like let's say you know you know you know the base here is gonna go down into this capacitor and then you know this is it doesn't make any sense the way I have this this laid out you know perhaps I you know need to put this through this ground you know over here and then you know I can move it around and you know this wire you know goes from here to to ground for example and the program is very good and it'll snap snap the wires to where they need to go so I could go into this and say it goes into this capacitor you know and I can add all the other types of components including transformers and whatnot so let me just rather than use this let's jump to a circuit that's mostly finished okay so what I've done now is brought up the schematic which I've actually completed for this particular project it's a 2n fifty 109 a push-pull amplifier where I've modified the outputs to to match 75 ohms but I did just as I was showing and that is populated the schematic part of this program with the various components I needed the two transistors the resistors the capacitors and as I said you can even find transformer symbols the ground ports where they need and the libraries remarkably comprehensive even the relays which I use a lot the omron gg5 v - 2 s you know it's in the library and and the pin notes are all accurately annotated and even the footprints are available for these particular relays and also and I'll talk about this a minute in a moment that even with respect to footprints there are quite a quite a number of available footprint files on the web which you know are very helpful to getting the ultimate PCB layout done so once the schematic is finished and what you need to do is what's called annotate the schematic and basically when you annotate the the schematic is it's basically giving a name to each of the components like the resistors r1 through our 5 or our 10 or however many resistors you know the transistors q1 q2 it's giving them a name and it needs to do that because then the next step is to assign footprints and what happens then when you open up the footprint assignment window which is just coming up right now it needs to have the assignment made for each component in order to properly allocate what's what this opened up on the other window so this is the footprint the the place where you will assign footprints so in this case here you can see all the capacitors c1 through c10 and there's a diode and the jacks these are my F connectors and so on and so forth so what you'll do in here is basically assign to each of these at components a footprint alright and you know you'll see here you have the footprint libraries on the on the left and this can be a little bit tricky but what you'll find is there's ways to suss out and find most of the footprints for all of these these components what sometimes you may need to do is build a footprint I won't go into that but it is possible and it's fairly easy in what's called the footprint editor to build your own footprint for example I built my own footprint for the F connectors and in fact you can see this is the F connector and you know I could view the footprint so you can see what it looks like and after bring that over here so this is this is what the footprint looks like and I was able to build that for my board mount F connectors and again I won't go into it but it's actually very very simple to to build if you need to make your own footprints so you assign the footprints and then say ok and update the schematic and the reason for that is you know we we then need to make sure that there's there's a when we export this into the PCB program that we the the PCB layout program understands what kind of footprint in other words what's the layout of this transistor going to look like and so what we do is we then do what's called we generate a netlist file and that's this button up here and basically you you generate a netlist and save it as a particular file I give it my my name and I'll save it and the reason for that is then what you'll want to do is you're going to create your PC so now that we've saved that netlist as they say we want to generate or in building our PCB board and that's why we made the netlist what we'll do is we'll you know it's different ways to do it but we'll press this which is opening up a new PCB board that keeps opening up on the other window and so this this lo this is your new this would be the PCB layout window where as we now you'll design the board now what we need to do is import that netlist we load the necklace in that list file and you can navigate to it you know you you know where you saved it and you you find it and then what you do is you'll update the PCB board with the net list file and so what you end up with is this and how much to confess when I first started this I thought what the heck what is this so anyway this is the canvas upon which you're going to layout the the various components but it works is you know each component you can grab so I'm gonna grab the relay so I'm gonna pull this relay over here and you know maybe grab this F connector and this is this is where it's a little bit of work you know you this is this is where the the effort comes in terms of you know designing these things but you know yeah just chip away at it and it gets fun so basically you'll notice what's happening here is you know this is one of the transformers you know and in this this right here is a resistor I can zoom in a bit and you know okay this may be for example I want to rotate this so I'm gonna rotate it clockwise say like so I can rotate this relay so you know and then here's another transformer and I can shoot this over here and then I can rotate it clockwise so essentially the approach I take in terms of getting so the first thing you want to do is in endeavor to a position the various components the way you think you want the board laid out and you know and just sort of chip away out of getting it closer and closer for example you may know that t2 needs to be close to this F connector whereas this transformer you know needs to be you know oh I don't know like maybe it has to be yeah it looks like it has to be over here anyway it can be a little bit I'm not gonna lie a little bit of a Rubik's cube in terms of getting all this laid out but you keep chipping away at it and and get it get it set up the way you want now what you'll notice of course is what are these lines well of course these lines are showing that there needs to a tres installed here and then so what we're gonna do now I am this is not it already know I'm gonna again fast track and jump to where I have got this all laid out but while we're here there are no traces and so I'll just show you for example let's say if you'll notice up here on the upper right I can choose either the front copper trace or a bottom copper trace in fact I'm gonna lay things out on the bottom copper trace and then what we'll do is called place or rather route a single track so I'm gonna say alright I know from this trace over to here is I need to put a trace and I need to put a trace from this spot to there and it'll automatically snap to it and then say from here to here and and then I could say take the bottom or the the front copper layer and say I'm gonna route another trace say from here to here and say from here rather from here up to here so anyway you're getting the idea as to how we place traces let me jump now to a more completed schematic so that I can talk a little bit more about some of the subtleties of laying traces alright so we've really jumped forward here now this is actually my completed board but I can just describe what I've done so this is exactly that very same schematic that I was playing with and in fact you can see here's the relay and the various transformers the two F connectors are here and here's the two transistors and as I said what I did initially was mostly positioned each component comparable to my schematic in terms of what I felt was the most logical layout in terms of the relative position of the Transformers the resistors the Transformers and the F connectors and and so on and so forth and then what I did is endeavor to get them as close as I could to minimize the size of the board then what we'll do is once I do that and get them contained I'll then put on you'll notice here on the on the right hand side this thing called edge cuts so we have to define an edge and that will basically define the size of the board and that's the yellow line and that'll be you know and so you just draw a draw a box you know you select edge cut and select run from the banner on the right here a polygon and you put a box around it by the way there's a little ruler here you see this measuring device here so I can take a ruler and I can you know measure you know you know the exact measurements of the grid and and and so on and so forth and also you can set your grid limits but again we're getting into subtleties here at this point so I'll put my edge cuts on another thing I do is I'll add what's called a copper pore because in this case I want a low-impedance ground plane that's shown in red I don't know if you can see this red dashed line that's my copper pore and I've decided to put that on the front copper surface so again there's a way to select that I think you place yeah zone and so we'll place a zone and then you know you'll you'll basically place your copper zone and then in my case that's ground and so you know for example all of the components that terminate to ground just terminate directly onto the to the ground so the other thing I did do I actually eliminated some of these traces just to show you so you know so I've already placed a lot of the traces but these these aren't so as I was showing I would say okay let's route a single track but the other thing that's shown here you'll notice is these track widths are different and I've done that to try and match the characteristic impedance of the of the the various parts of the circuit 75 ohms and 50 ohms for example and you'll notice here under track width I can select different track widths well actually you can create them so let's take say place a 1 millimeter track and I'm gonna route a single track and I want it on the back copper board and so we basically go from here and you'll notice it sort of follows itself and it is it'll-it'll purposely avoid you know conflicts as best it can oops lock that in there and so and then this one I say come from here and it should find its way around and the same so it's very very convenient and easy to place these traces the other thing you can do is for example say you know I don't know what's an example yellow I don't know just say just say for example you want to move this traits you want to move this trace so you could go say 45 degree drag mode and I can just move it around wherever I want to to place it you know you notice here is that maybe a problem where you know I need to put a copper trace on the the upper copper side and I you know this is a voltage line and I can go second route a single track and we can go from here now I can cross of course the because it's on the upper side of the board whereas the green is on the bottom side and so on and so forth until you've you know got everything filled out and the traces are completed now one other thing you can do which is really kind of cool with this is you can actually do what's called a view view in 3d viewer and you can actually see the board in three dimensions so and to the extent that the footprints included an actual three-dimensional representation of the component they will be populated but in many cases the footprints don't include that but it's this is very very handy to be able to look at your board and you know and identify if there's any any errors or if it's exactly how how you wanted it you can even place texts you know I put my call on here you notice on the right-hand banner you could place text but you have to make sure if you place the text that you're putting it on the front silkscreen this is the front silk screen in the back silk screen and and and so on and so forth so that's basically the process in a very very brief nutshell again not meant to be a detailed explanation on exactly how to do this but as I said there's a lot of tutorials online on how to you know how to get through a lot of this right oh I did forget to say that you know you can also add on the front silk screen text you know in this case my component value so I you know this is 120 on resistor you notice I'm moving that around and you know you know this is the same width you know I can move my this print put it wherever I want and and and add labeling and it's it's very very user friendly so now that we're done we're ready to basically get our board made though one thing I would say is um you know by way of things to watch for there is a thing called rules check where that yeah do performer design rules check and it'll you know you can run this and it'll tell you if there's errors like if you've missed some connections or whatnot one other thing that I kind of was a gotcha for me and that is to say if you've designed this and then let's say for example you've got it all laid out and then you I don't know I would pick an example let's take this transformer and if I move this transformer you notice what's happened here there's you know I basically disconnected and I haven't quite figured this out it'll be honest for you there's a way to do something called rather than move but you can use something called drag and it will keep the traces with you be very careful because if you've moved a component subsequent to doing your trace layouts and if you've moved it just a little bit what can happen is you will not be connected to that PCB board in fact I don't know if I could show you it here I'll show you what it may be I don't know if it'll show up here now that I've done that I don't know if it will it mean oh yeah well look okay so you see right here with my cursor notice how that's not connected anymore alright and that's only because I moved that component just a little bit away from its connection so you know be very very careful about doing that and you know double check your double check your work on that so alright so once we're finished this well one of the things you could do sorry guys but look you can also print this okay if you just put Press print okay the dialog button at the top and what happens is this a print its prints to my laser printer but what's really really cool I find this prints at exactly to scale so you'll you you can actually hold the board in your hand what I mean is it's exact size so you can you know you can check your holes actually you know if you're unsure your foot prints you can actually you know put your transistor right on there make sure the holes line up and the F connectors and whatever box you have plans so I found that really handy being able to to print it and and do that anyway so once you're done of course you press save and what you do then this is this will now be saved in your project in what's called a dot PCB file and it's that very file that you'll use to then upload to your prefer a manufacturing company to to get your board made I'm going to just show you very quickly on how I do that and the company I use all right so in your browser navigate to these guys called oh Sh parkour OSH Park these are the guys I use and as soon as you get there you'll notice right on there splash page they have a thing called browse for files and you know you literally just go there and browse to you know navigate to wherever you have saved that key PCB file and upload it and you know it just automatically it proceeds to upload it to these to their to their server look of course these are the guys I use and I know there's others out there and in fact I know for sure there's you know pretty manufacturers in China that will make these boards a lot cheaper like quite a bit cheaper I personally just try and avoid buying things in China if I can shop quasi locally in North America these guys are out of Oregon I but you know they make a they make a really good product product and and also they take a ki CAD file directly you know you don't have to worry about two zipped Gerber files and things like that once your board is uploaded you'll get a page like this it shows you basically okay a two-layer board it's this is the size and three boards will cost $37 and you know that's what the cost and and that's the thing here you know you have to order a minimum of three boards you can't order just one board so you know that's that's the reality of these guys you know they're meant to be prototype boards and but you know I really like their product and anyway and you just continue along and you know the shipping can be free if you choose to have the mail tea or you can pay a premium to have them FedEx to you so anyway you know you can continue and it'll it basically shows you the top of the board and the drills and so on and so forth you know I have quite a few other projects in here these are the you know whence you've logged on and made it made a file you know this in fact is the same push/pull board and I can click it and look at it in detail you know before you order it you know you can see exactly yeah that's what I want anyway there you go that's how I proceeded along and make PCB boards you know it can be a lot of fun as I said at the outset this is a real quick and I mean you're not quick enough video but I just thought I'd put this together this afternoon very and now maybe just to give you enough confidence to give it a try if you've never made PCB boards you know it's a lot of fun and it can be just a great project you know for to kill a few days 73 this is Steve v 6w z

Channel: ve6wz

Views: 7,290

Rating: 4.9794869 out of 5

Keywords: kicad, pcb design

Id: EpTK4yfk4yw

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020