Hey,
First I don't mean to sound?ungrateful but can we keep this thread to the bounding boxes. I understand the process. I just mistakenly called pcbnew kicad.
As far as changing the double red bounding box, you say I shouldn't change this. Problem is I did and now I'm annoyed at how small I made it and I want to change it back. But I can't for the life of me remember how I did it.
Also that grey box is the graphics window box? If I also can't change that, let me ask the question I really want to ask. I want to print to SVG and have my image not contain a ton of whitespace all around my one, little schematic. Is there a way to have the SVG export only a small area?
Also what is autoplace? This feature obeys the yellow lines that I drew on pcb_edges? Will print shops obey this bounding box if I send them my gerber files?
-mike
On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Andy Eskelson
<andyyahoo@...> wrote:
?
Hi Mike,
kicad consists of several independent programs, it also runs on both
linux and windows, so be careful in what you describe. From your post
you are working with pcbnew which is the program used to lay out tracks.
pcbnew takes a netlist that is generated from the schematic drawing
program which is called eeschema.
The basic process is:
create your circuit, and do all the necessary design checks and so on.
Annotate the circuit, then generate the netlist.
Next run cvtpcb, read the netlist and then use cvtpcb to assign the
various component footprints. Then you save the netlist again, which
will be updated with the component module names. (This process selects
things like a TO92 package to a specific component)
Then you can run pcbnew, read in the netlist and that will dump all your
components in the corner of the workspace for you to place on your board.
Of course it is a bit more involved than that if you have to start
modifying modules and so on, but it comes together fairly quickly.
In the kicad/doc directory you will find various documents for the main
programs of kicad, these can also be accessed from the help menus.
Once you get going with kicad, take the time to have a read of these
documents, they contain lots of useful info. There is also (in the
tutorial directory) a rather old tutorial, but it's still useful, Do note
that it was produced for a much older version of kicad, but generally the
same steps are there, perhaps in a different position. DO take the time to
work through the tutorial SEVERAL times, then things will start to make
more sense.
To answer your queries...
What you are seeing is the general workspace (the grey box. You don't
edit this, it's just the boundary of the graphics window.
The red double line is the border of the drawing. This arrangement is
fairly standard in CAD drawings. You will see that there are numbers and
letters in the border which gives you an X-Y type of lookup. Again you DO
NOT edit this directly.
Yellow lines are the edges of your PCB you should only put these on the
PCB_Edges layer.
When you start a new project, one of the first things you do is set up
your drawing sizes and so on. This is done via the page settings function
(4th icon top toolbar) in the requester you can select the drawing size,
and also edit the names and so on. When you select the OK, the wording
and size of the red drawing will be updated to match your changes.
As I've said, kicad is not hard to use, but it does take a bit of
practise and getting used to. (one common cause of confusion is that
there are lots of context options on the right mouse click) Work through
the tutorial, and give things a try. Post any problems, there are plenty
of people here who will help.
Andy
On Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:24:44 -0500
Mike MacHenry <
dskippy@...> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm new to kicad. I'm trying to understand what seem to be the three
> different perimeters of my circuit and how to edit them.
>
> 1) There's a red double line box (there from the start) with some info
> in the bottom-right corner around the project. I changed the size once
> but now I can't figure out how to change it back. Also what is the
> effect of this red box? It doesn't seem to change any of the exports
> or prints I make.
>
> 2) There is a light-grey box just out side of the double red box (also
> there from the start) that seems to be the bounding box of my Print
> SVG. I would like to change the size of this if possible.
>
> 3) I can also use the add dimension tool to put a yellow box (only
> present after using the tool) around my circuit. It what is the effect
> of this? Does it tell the output that my circuit is limited to this
> box?
>
> -mike
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your question.
> Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator of Kicad.
> Please visit for details of how to contribute your symbols/modules to the kicad library.
> For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the kicad-devel group at ! Groups Links
>
>
>
