ℹ️ kicad-exports will not be updated anymore! As KiBot itself runs now in CI/CD, and there is this great template, even better automation can be done.

Auto generate exports (schematics, gerbers, plots) for any KiCAD5 project. You could run it locally or on every git push with Github Actions.

usage of kicad-exports with Github Actions

name: example

on:
  push:
    paths:
    - '**.sch'
    - '**.kicad_pcb'
  pull_request:
    paths:
      - '**.sch'
      - '**.kicad_pcb'

jobs:
  example:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - uses: nerdyscout/[email protected]
      with:
      # Required - kibot config file
        config: any.kibot.yaml
      # optional - prefix to output defined in config
        dir: docs
      # optional - schematic file
        schema: '*.sch'
      # optional - PCB design file
        board: '*.kicad_pcb'
      # optional - verbose output info
        verbose: 0
    - name: upload results
      uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
      with:
        name: docs
        path: docs

The predefined configs do run a ERC and DRC in advance, if these checks fail no exports will be generated. You could write your own config file and define filters to ignore these errors therefore forcing to export the data. In this case be careful not to end up with some faulty PCB.

⚠️ Pushing auto generated files back to the same branch you are working on manualy is a bad idea!

use kicad-exports local

Installation

You need to have Docker installed.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/nerdyscout/kicad-exports /some/where/kicad-exports
cd /some/where/kicad-exports
make && make install

run

go to your KiCad project folder and run kicad-exports

cd /my/kicad/example-project
kicad-exports -d $DIR_OUT -e $SCHEMA -b $BOARD -c $CONFIG 

⚠️ running any command your git repository will be modified using kicad-git-filters

run with predefined example config

kicad-exports -c any.kibot.yaml 

run with own config

place config file in directory of your kicad project and use relative path.

kicad-exports -c myconfig.kibot.yaml -v -s all

or run multiple config files

kicad-exports -c config/*.kibot.yaml -b myproject.kicad_pcb -e myproject.sch

run bundle

bundles are a choice of configs run sequentially

kicad-exports -c config/bundle/documentation.default.kibot.lst

generates a diff of the PCB between the given and the latest commit

kicad-exports -x $COMMIT_HASH -b myproject.kicad_pcb

running localy enables additional paramaters

• -v, --verbose is useful while developing own config files
• -o, --overwrite key=value overwrite variables in config file
• -s, --skip $arg skips preflight from given config file
• -x, --diff $commit_hash output differential files between $commit_hash and latest commit

Credits

kicad-exports is just a wrapper for kibot and all it dependencies. For further details of all the tools used please see below.

• KiBot
• KiBoM
• IBoM
• kicad-automation-scripts
• PcbDraw
• kicad-git-filters
• KiCad-Diff
• kicad-boardview