1 comments

  • a2-_ 12 hours ago ago

    I design circuit boards as an hobby. Lot of times I would order one, wait for like two weeks, most of the time wouldn't work because it has a mistake, I have to fix it and order it again, it just keeps on going in a loop. To avoid this situation I built free KiCad plugin that checks your board before you order it.

    If you click "Check design" and in a second you get a list of things that you double-check, each with its suggested fix, since it is still in progress, it can catch around 4/10 problems, so I would recommend treating it as a first pass, like a linter. If you want more data you could check my KiCad forum post or Github, as more people contribute VelaTrace keeps on getting better.

    It also has a route feature which can route boards with its own built-in router: You can see the preview, KiCad checks it, and one Undo takes it back to where it was.

    It is free and open source(MIT). KiCad 10, tested on Windows. Installs from a zip. There's a demos board with mistakes planted on it if you wanna test it out.

    1) What mistake has cost you a board? any mistake, small or big would be helpful, for example recently I was using an mic for one of my PCBs which has 3 pins on bottom and top but, I accidently put all 6 pins in one row.

    GitHub link - https://github.com/F-Blaze/VelaTrace