This week I finish up my schematic for a new board. This new board is similar to the previous PCB board that I design, only that this board uses Spartan6 TQFP packaging.  Most of the component will remain only some minor changes on the capacitor decoupling. To know the required/necessary capacitor for the Spartan6 chip, follow this link in page14 (Spartan-6 FPGA PCB Design and Pin Planning Guide).

I also learn how to insert picture (.png) onto the board. The method I am using is slightly tedious, I got a feeling there is an easier method. Still, to insert logo or whatever sorts of picture onto KiCAD, open the ‘Bitmap to Component Converter’ function -> Load Bitmap (.png) -> Options, Negative -> Export to Pcbnew. Next is to insert the converted picture/logo into ‘Pcbnew’ and open with ‘Footprint Editor’. The funny thing is that this particular converted picture cannot be edited using ‘Footprint Editor’, therefore to only way to tweak/edit the picture is to export the footprint to another format ‘.kicad_mod’, finally open with notepad/geany to edit the code. eg: F.Silk to B.Silk so that the picture will be at the bottom layer of the board.

Next finalizing the PCB board and export it as Gerber format. In ‘Pcbnew’ -> File -> Plot -> Plot. To create drill file -> Generate Drill File.

 


0 Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.