Boost Your PCB Design Productivity | 7 Best Plugins for KiCad

In this video, I showcase my top 7 best plugins for KiCad that will take your design productivity to the next level. From streamlining gerber creation to enhancing layout efficiency, Whether you're a seasoned pro or just dipping your toes into PCB design, these tools are absolute game-changers.
Make your own PCB Ruler:
• I Made a Custom PCB Ru...
00:00 - Introduction
00:55 - Gerber to Order
02:02 - Board 2 PDF
03:11 - Place Footprints
05:45 - Round Tracks
06:47 - Coil Generator
07:26 - Interactive HTML BOM
08:15 - Transform It
09:51 - Bonus Tip
10:45 - Conclusion

[@TerminalCuriosityEE]

There have been many great comments pointing out that this was recorded in KiCad 6 and the latest release is KiCad 8. That's my mistake, but I have retested all of these plugins on the latest update and they all work as normal except for "Gerber to Order", which seems to be broken. In the mean time, until that plugin is updated, you can use "Fabrication Toolkit" for JLC PCB and it should work fine, even for other PCB manufacturers.
There is an alternative called "PCBway fabrication toolkit" for PCBway, but seems this plugin has also broken during the update.

[@tim_goll]

Oh, it is so fun to see that you use our coil generator! There is a huge update with new features coming soon!

[@adrienferreira4666]

Neatly explained and demonstrated. I liked and subscribed. Well done!

[@StevenBedoya2]

Oh man!!! This is strongly appreciated, thanks for it!!!

[@PactoTech]

That "transform it" plug in should be merged into the main project! thanks

[@bernardarts8748]

The coil generator has a few shorts in the trace at the outer diameter when trace width is greater then 250um (space 200um).

[@hallkbrdz]

Another great plugin, although currently broken in v8 (in work), is kicad-action-scripts which includes a way to easily add thermal relief holes for your PCB.

[@TerminalCuriosityEE]

Thanks for Pro tip! I'll have to check this one out

[@HansWurst-bk9sb]

Maybe you should update this video from version 6 to 8? 🙂

[@mehmetkendi6067]

Thank you!

[@meyou118]

subscribed... keep it up , ty!

[@sabbrush6001]

That was cool thx

[@michaelwittmann3176]

Very helpful hope you get more attention

[@TerminalCuriosityEE]

Thankyou for the support :)

[@user-ty4ht9nm1u]

Kicad is a nice PCB design tool!

[@osurya2956]

These vids are soo cool. I wonder why you have so low sub count. And please Do a full kicad tutorial. Beginner to expert series.

[@CarlosDelcristo]

Very nice Tom the point video!! Thanks for sharing. Hope to see more

[@TerminalCuriosityEE]

Great feedback. Thankyou!

[@nekcorp2579]

Very good video. Where can I found this PCB ?

[@EduardoBehr]

Kicad 7 was already capable of creating rounded tracks natively

[@donepearce]

When creating a set of gerbers for JLCPCB, do you still have access to their board population service? I have used that from Easyeda, but with that I can see what parts they stock.

[@benwolfe1301]

Yes, you just need to manually browse LCSC and find the equivalent part numbers to modify your BOM, then they can do it.

[@donepearce]

@@benwolfe1301 That sounds like a huge opportunity for me to screw up...

[@mateuszczarnecki1079]

There is dedicated jlcpcb plugin which you are able to pick lcsc numbers within pcb editor

[@donepearce]

@@mateuszczarnecki1079 Thanks

[@yash1152]

0:30 why's Nixie Tube youtube channel mentioned here?

[@JosePablo2008]

Published two weeks ago and you are using KiCad 6!!!.
Come on. Update the video with KiCad 8.

[@raulsipos315]

Hello, can you not give the model from the ruler?

[@TerminalCuriosityEE]

I've uploaded the PCB ruler files to PCBway's shared community files so everyone can access them. Link in the description on the ruler video.

[@muhammadfaisalemir3172]

#1121 LOL 😂🇮🇩

[@Sammyismysidekick]

A copy, not pro