Fabrication

KiKit offers fully automatic export of all data required for fabrication of your designs. Since every fabrication house has different requirements on the design files (e.g., special names of gerber files, different requirements for assembly files) there is no "universal exporter" in KiKit. Instead, KiKit offers special command for each supported fabrication house.

Common Options

All fab subcommands has a common invocation structure:

kikit fab <fabhouse> <options> <sourceDir> <outputDir>

All commands also support the following options:

• --drc\--no-drc (default --drc). Check for DRC violations before exporting the files. With this options, you won't send a board that fails DRC to your manufacturer.
• --nametemplate <str>: If you want to name your files differently, specify this option. This option takes a string that should contain {}. This string will be replaced by gerber, pos or bom in the out file names. The extension is appended automatically. Variables in text are also supported eg: {boardTitle}_rev{boardRevision}_{date}_{}. The project variables are available with the user- prefix; e.g., `MFR: {user-mfr}```

Each of the fab command also take additional, manufacturer specific, options. See documentation for the individual manufacturer below:

Currently Supported:

Note: click on the name of the manufacturer to see corresponding documentation:

• JLC PCB: board manufacturing, SMD assembly. https://jlcpcb.com/
• PCBWay: board manufacturing, assembly. https://www.pcbway.com/
• OSH Park: board manufacturing. https://oshpark.com/
• Neoden YY1: desktop PCB assembly. https://neodenusa.com/neoden-yy1-pick-place-machine
• OpenPNP: Open system for pick'n'place machines. https://openpnp.org/

Adding New Fabrication Houses

To add a new fabrication command you have to extend KiKit's source code. A rather basic knowledge of python is required to do so.

Create a new file kikit/fab/fabhousename.py and implement a new command with the same name as the file. Then add the command to kikit/fab/__init__.py. The common functionality for all fabrication houses should be located in kikit/fab/common.py. You can use kikit/fab/jlcpcb.py for inspiration.

Once you implement a support for new fabrication house, open a pull request on KiKit's GitHub page.