KiKit Packer

Merge multiple boards into a single file (panel) with minimum area to reduce costs when ordering with your PCB manufacturer.

• Works with rectangular shaped boards
• based on rectangle-packer
• finds maximum density packing by offset and 90° rotation
• applies penalty for rotation (prefer layouts with least rotated area)

Example Output

Input: 2x MCU head + 5x PSU for Fugu2 solar charger. Please ignore the vcuts here.

Setup

You need to have KiCad with KiKit plugin installed.

Clone this repository into a folder (e.g. ~/dev/)

git clone https://github.com/fl4p/kikit-packer
cd kikit-packer

Then install the requirements, according to one of the following sections for macOS, Linux and Windows:

Install dependencies (macOS)

Create a new virtual environment based on the KiCad one and install requirements:

PYTHON=/Applications/KiCad/KiCad.app/Contents/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin/python3
${PYTHON} -m venv --system-site-packages venv-ki
./venv-ki/bin/pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Install dependencies (Linux)

Test if you can import pcbwnew:

python3 -c "import pcbnew; print(pcbnew._pcbnew)"

Create a new virtual environment:

PYTHON=python3
${PYTHON} -m venv --system-site-packages venv
./venv/bin/pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Install dependencies (Windows)

"C:\Program Files\KiCad\8.0\bin\python.exe" -m pip install -r requirements.txt

How to use

Create a yaml file listing all your boards you want to combine and how many copies you need:

boards:
  - board: debug-probe/debug-probe.kicad_pcb
    qty: 1
    margin_mm: 2      # default = 1
  - board: sensor/sensor.kicad_pcb
    qty: 4

Here we name this file probe-and-4sensors.yaml. File names in the .yaml file are relative to the folder where the .yaml is stored.

Then run kikit from shell:

kikit panelize \
  --layout 'plugin; code: kikit-packer/kikit-packer.py.Plugin; input:probe-and-4sensors.yaml' \
    --tabs 'fixed; hwidth: 2mm; vwidth: 2mm' \
    --cuts 'mousebites' \
    --post 'millradius: 1mm' \
  sensor.kicad_pcb combined.kicad_pcb

The main board command line argument (sensor.kicad_pcb here) and output file (combined.kicad_pcb) are relative to the current working directory. Usually the main board file name is one of the the boards from the .yaml. Or you can set this to an empty reference board that contains all the design constraints for your PCB manufacturer. The output board will have the same board setup (DRC etc.) as the main board file.