ℹ️ kicad-exports will not be updated anymore! As KiBot itself runs now in CI/CD, and there is this great template, even better automation can be done.

Auto generate exports (schematics, gerbers, plots) for any KiCAD5 project. You could run it locally or on every git push with Github Actions.

name: example

on:
  push:
    paths:
    - '**.sch'
    - '**.kicad_pcb'
  pull_request:
    paths:
      - '**.sch'
      - '**.kicad_pcb'

jobs:
  example:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - uses: nerdyscout/[email protected]
      with:
      # Required - kibot config file
        config: any.kibot.yaml
      # optional - prefix to output defined in config
        dir: docs
      # optional - schematic file
        schema: '*.sch'
      # optional - PCB design file
        board: '*.kicad_pcb'
      # optional - verbose output info
        verbose: 0
    - name: upload results
      uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
      with:
        name: docs
        path: docs

The predefined configs do run a ERC and DRC in advance, if these checks fail no exports will be generated. You could write your own config file and define filters to ignore these errors therefore forcing to export the data. In this case be careful not to end up with some faulty PCB.

⚠️ Pushing auto generated files back to the same branch you are working on manualy is a bad idea!

You need to have Docker installed.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/nerdyscout/kicad-exports /some/where/kicad-exports
cd /some/where/kicad-exports
make && make install

go to your KiCad project folder and run kicad-exports

cd /my/kicad/example-project
kicad-exports -d $DIR_OUT -e $SCHEMA -b $BOARD -c $CONFIG 

⚠️ running any command your git repository will be modified using kicad-git-filters

kicad-exports -c any.kibot.yaml 

place config file in directory of your kicad project and use relative path.

kicad-exports -c myconfig.kibot.yaml -v -s all

or run multiple config files

kicad-exports -c config/*.kibot.yaml -b myproject.kicad_pcb -e myproject.sch

bundles are a choice of configs run sequentially

kicad-exports -c config/bundle/documentation.default.kibot.lst

kicad-exports -x $COMMIT_HASH -b myproject.kicad_pcb

• -v, --verbose is useful while developing own config files
• -o, --overwrite key=value overwrite variables in config file
• -s, --skip $arg skips preflight from given config file
• -x, --diff $commit_hash output differential files between $commit_hash and latest commit

kicad-exports is just a wrapper for kibot and all it dependencies. For further details of all the tools used please see below.

• KiBot
• KiBoM
• IBoM
• kicad-automation-scripts
• PcbDraw
• kicad-git-filters
• KiCad-Diff
• kicad-boardview