6. Electronics Design

This week I learned how to use KiCad to create electronic circut schematics and PCB boards.

Research

Prior to this experience, I haven't worked with KiCad at all I didn't even know that PCB boards were even manufactured this way. Honestly, I didn't even know anything about making circuts at all.

Setting up KiCad

For this week we needed to learn and use a Electronic design automation (EDA) tool to design a circuit board. Downloading KiCad had it's own set of struggles. I was having some problems with organizing my files. I first downloaded KiCad for Mac from the website and I moved it to my applications folder.

From here I had to download the Fab Academy library. What? Well, basically in KiCad is a catalog of materials and circut stuff, but of course it doesn't have everything. Part of the Fab Academy catalog is a list of equiptment most labs have, so the library that I was trying to download would showcase the rest of those parts. This means I would be able to design a board I would be more likely to be able to produce.

On the Fab Academy home site, the inventory is showcased here.

• • • Group Documentation on Testing Equiptment