Mastering PCB design with real-world projects

This book builts on KiCad Like a Pro – Fundamentals and Projects and aims to help you practice your new KiCad skills by challenging you in a series of real-world projects. The projects are supported by a comprehensive set of recipes with detailed instructions on how to achieve a variety of simple and complex tasks. Design the PCBs for a solar power supply, an LED matrix array, an Arduino-powered datalogger, and a custom ESP32 board. Understand the finer details of the interactive router, how to manage KiCad project teams with Git, how to use an autorouter on 2 and 4-layer PCBs, and much more.

KiCad 8 is a modern, cross-platform application suite built around schematic and design editors. This stable and mature PCB tool is a perfect fit for electronic engineers and makers. With KiCad 8, you can create PCBs of any complexity and size without the constraints associated with the commercial packages.

Here are the most significant improvements and features in KiCad 8, both over and under the hood:

• Modern user interface, completely redesigned from earlier versions
• Improved and customizable electrical and design rule checkers
• Theme editor allowing you to fully customize the look of KiCad on your screen
• Ability to import projects from Eagle, CADSTART, and more
• An improved and tightly integrated SPICE circuit simulator
• Autorouting with the Freerouting plugin
• Filters define which elements of a layout are selectable
• Enhanced interactive router helps you draw single tracks and differential pairs with precision
• New or enhanced tools to draw tracks, measure distances, tune track lengths, etc.
• Enhanced tool for creating filled zones
• A customizable coordinate system facilitates data exchange with other CAD applications
• Realistic ray-tracing capable 3D viewer
• Differential pair routing
• Rich repositories of symbol, footprint, and 3D shape libraries
• Python scripting API for programmatic customization and extensions
• Improved footprint wizard for fast custom footprints