4.10 Designing and having a board made

Outcome 10 of 12 in domain 4 · Digital and microcontrollers

From schematic to the board received and soldered: KiCad, footprints, routing, fabrication in China.

My targets

I declare:

Draw a complete schematic in KiCad, with the right symbols, references and values, and pass it through the electrical rules checker.
Choose or draw the footprints, and check each against the component’s datasheet before routing.
Route a two-layer board with a ground plane, decoupling capacitors near the pins, wide power traces.
Produce the Gerbers and the drill file, order from JLCPCB or PCBWay, and explain the quote.
Solder the board received, power it up current-limited, and note what you’d change in revision B.
Follow the board maker’s design rules (trace width, clearance, drilling) and pass the design rules checker without error.
Have the SMD components assembled by the maker from its catalogue, and prepare the placement files.
Design the enclosure around the board’s STEP model exported from KiCad (FreeCAD or OpenSCAD, parametric: holes, connector cutouts, standoffs) and print it in PETG.
Diagnosis: a board that doesn’t work on the first try, short between traces, mirrored footprint, component backwards; the verification path, ohmmeter first.