Hello All,
I have been playing with Kicad for the past few weeks and the more I
use it the better I like it ! The golden rule seems to be spend a LOT of
time on the schematic and get it right – missing junctions caused me a
lot of trouble. I first did a test board and sent the Gerber plots to a
local PCB shop and they confirmed that they looked fine for
manufacture.
I am now busy on a more useful board, an 8 channel amplifier. I want
the layout identical for each channel but do not want to repeat the
routing procedure for each channel. What I have done is produce the
schematic for a single channel (and some PSU components) and then
imported the netlist and routed the PCB – so far so good. I then
disabled the DRC checking and block copied the single channel artwork 8
times. I then manually (no net list) connected up the power rails to
each section and also the inputs and outputs to the DB 25 connectors.
Is this a good approach or is there a better way to do this ?
One other thing – is it possible to specify “black and white” when
printing the component side silk screen on laser printer ? It tries to
print the component values and part numbers in colour and they come out
light grey – I need a magnifying glass to read them !
Any suggestion will be welcome.
Regards.
Bill Randall
University of Cape Town
