KiPlot

KiPlot is a program which helps you to plot your KiCad PCBs to output formats easily, repeatable, and most of all, scriptably. This means you can use a Makefile to export your KiCad PCBs just as needed.

For example, it's common that you might want for each board rev:

• Check DRC one last time (use KiCad Automation Scripts)
• Gerbers, drills and drill maps for a fab in their favourite format
• Fab docs for the assembler
• Pick and place files

You want to do this in a one-touch way, and make sure everything you need to do so it securely saved in version control, not on the back of an old datasheet.

KiPlot lets you do this.

As a side effect of providing a scriptable plot driver for KiCad, KiPlot also allows functional testing of KiCad plot functions, which would otherwise be somewhat unwieldy to write.

Using KiPlot

You can call kiplot directly, passing a PCB file and a config file:

kiplot -b $(PCB) -c $(KIPLOT_CFG) -v

A simple target can be added to your makefile, so you can just run make pcb_files or integrate into your current build process.

pcb_files:
    kiplot -b $(PCB) -c $(KIPLOT_CFG) -v

Installing

Installation on Ubuntu/Debian:

Get the Debian package from the releases section and run:

sudo apt install ./kiplot.inti-cmnb_*_all.deb