After half a year I finally released version 1.0 of KiKit. You might ask – what is KiKit? KiKit is a tool for automation of the manufacturing process of your boards designed in KiCAD. It makes the process fully automatic, repeatable and less error-prone. It basically allows you to:
- Create panels of your boards (without any limitations on board shape). You just run a command and that’s it. No more hand-drawing of panels!
- You can quickly export files for manufacturing. KiKit comes with presets for various manufacturers, so you just invoke a command and you get the correct settings for gerbers, it can also export BOM and POS files according to the manufacturer specs. It can also check DRC for you and it does not generate any files in such a case. Therefore you never submit faulty gebers for manufacturing.
- It can also export stencils – either files for manufacturing of steel stencils or it can export a 3D model of a stencil that you can 3D print.
- You can automatically run DRC in CI hooked in your repository – in that case you will be notified via e-mail, that you committed something, that does breaks the board.
KiKit also simplifies some parts of the workflow, where KiCAD struggles – e.g., batch hiding of references or multi-board projects.
So what is new in the current release?
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