KiCad in 90 minutes — schematic to fab files

A no-nonsense walkthrough. No design wizardry, no "easy" shortcuts that aren't. Just the workflow I actually use.

Every KiCad tutorial I’ve ever followed has the same problem — it spends forty minutes setting up a custom keyboard shortcut for a feature you’ll never use, and then breezes past the fab-file export in two screenshots. This post does the opposite.

Step 1 — schematic capture

Open the schematic editor, drop your parts, wire them up. Use hierarchical sheets only if the design genuinely has repeated subcircuits. Otherwise it’s overhead.

Step 2 — assigning footprints

Resist the urge to use the bundled libraries for anything that isn’t a passive. They drift. Keep a project-local footprint library and copy in what you need.

Step 3 — fab files

Plot Gerbers, run the DRC, run it again because you ignored it the first time. Export the drill file. Zip the lot. Send it to a fab house. Wait. Have a coffee.