Electronic Engineering
KiCad, A Guided Course
From Schematic to Fabricated Board
- 163 pages
- 2026
- pt
There are many KiCad manuals. What sets this one apart is who wrote it: before drawing his first board, the author was an industrial maintenance technician on the machines that etch the copper, drill, insert the components and test the board at the end of the line. A book written by someone who opened those machines does not only teach the software — it teaches you to draw what the factory can actually build.
Thirty chapters follow one project from beginning to end: installation, the schematic editor, libraries and custom symbols, electrical rules checking, hierarchical schematics, the bill of materials, the handover to the PCB editor, placement, routing, ground planes, vias, DRC, and the generation of the Gerber and drill files the factory asks for.
Two complete hands-on projects — one in the schematic editor and one in the PCB editor — close each half of the book. They are not exercises: they are boards taken to the point where you could send them out to be made.
For anyone who wants the whole road, this volume is also available together with «PCB Fabrication and Assembly» in a single 42-chapter edition.
In this book
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01 Introduction to KiCad
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02 Schematic editor
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03 Components and libraries
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04 Creating custom libraries and symbols
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05 Electrical Rules Check (ERC)
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06 Hierarchical schematics
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07 Bill of materials (BOM)
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08 From schematic to PCB editor
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09 Placement, routing and ground planes
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10 Design Rules Check (DRC)
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11 Generating Gerber and drill files
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12 Complete hands-on projects
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