TUTORIAL
Make artistic KiCad PCBs with Inkscape
and B.Cu layer visibility ‘eye’ icons to make the
shapes disappear.
Next, we enabled the B.Silk layer by removing
the ‘-disabled’ text and add the HackSpace magazine
logo icon. As we are working on the back layer of
the PCB, we need to imagine that the PCB is lying
on a surface and we are drawing on the bottom of
the PCB. Considering this, we realise that we need
to reverse any items we place on the back layer for
them to appear correctly on the PCB.SORTING THE SILKSCREEN
As silkscreen layer items are generally a single
colour (often white), we made the HS logo by
subtracting the HS
letters from a solid filled
circle, so that on the
finished board we will
see the HS letters as
the underlying mask
colour. Finally, using the
horizontal flip tool, we
reversed the HackSpace
magazine logo and then added it to the B.Silk layer.
One layer we haven’t used in this tutorial is the drill
layer. In svg2shenzen it is treated largely in a similar
way to other layers. A slight difference when placing
a drill point in svg2shenzhen, rather than in KiCad, is
that drawing a circle creates a simple hole and we
need to remember to add a copper pad surrounding
it if needed.
The last job in Inkscape (other than corrections
later!) was adding the concreted0g logo to the
other side of the board. As this was placed on the
front silkscreen layer (F.Silk), it did not need to
be reversed. However, we did want to place it in
a position where currently it couldn’t be seen inInkscape due to the placement of items on the B.Cu
and B.Mask-auto layers. Simply toggling the visibility
eye icons removes these items from view, allowing
us to place the logo correctly (Figure 3).
Having finished everything we need in Inkscape
for this project, we need to use the svg2shenzhen
extension to export the project into a KiCad project
file and PCBnew file to allow us to continue the work
in KiCad. Save your work first, if you haven’t done so
already, and then click Extensions > Svg2Shenzen
> Export KiCad. You should see a dialog box with
numerous options. The first is the path to where you
want the files to be exported. The second drop-
down menu allows you to select between exporting
as a KiCad project, a
KiCad module, or a PNG.
We are going to set this
to the first option so that
it creates a KiCad project
and a PCBnew file for
us to open in KiCad.
The second option
is useful if you want
to use svg2shenzen to design a module that you
can export and use in any KiCad projects. We left
the ‘threshold’ and ‘export dpi’ options set as the
defaults, and also left ‘auto flatten Béziers for edge
cuts layer?’ checked.
The debug mode, when checked, gives some
debug messages when you export which may
be useful for debugging or reporting back to the
svg2shenzhen team if you discover an issue, but
may be unchecked for most usage. As we aren’t
using svg2shenzhen to do the entire design (we are
going to add some components in KiCad) and as we
don’t want to use the PCBWay service, uncheck
the ‘launch PCBway’ option. Finally, you can set theFigure 3
Toggling the visibility
of copper and mask
layers so you can
see areas of
silkscreen layers
Figure 4
Opening the project
in KiCad for the first
time allows you to
see your svg2shenzen
design in the KiCad
3D viewerA rule for the edge
cuts layer is that
you shouldn’t group
items. If you do use
groups, make sure
you ungroup and
make it a single path
before exporting
the project
from Inkscape.QUICK TIP
As a test to see if it worked,
we added a simple circuit that
is a breakout board for an
ATtiny85 microcontroller”
”