KiCAD Library Generator

A KiCAD Library Generator tool to simplify library maintenance

This script is heavily work in progress! It can be used only for experimental purposes.

Motivation

Have you ever wondered what would it be to have a KiCAD library based on an Excel workbook (similar to Altium Database Libraries)? Or to avoid any duplicated work to draw the same schematic symbols over and over? Now, the solution is here!

Draw once, use unlimited times!

Features

The KiCAD Library Generator reads the given Excel workbook and creates one library from each sheets.

Installation

Download the script and run!

Pre-requisites

• Python 3
• xlrd

Configuration

In the script, you can set up three parameters:

1. lib_name This contains the name of the excel sheet, i.e. 'example.xlsx'
2. symbols_name This contains the name of the symbol library, i.e. './symbol/symbols.lib'
3. output_folder This contains the name of the output folder, i.e. './schematic'

Usage

The different sheets contain the different libraries. In the example two sheets are present: 'capacitors' and 'resistors'. This means that two schematic symbol libraries will be created to the output folder, defined in the script.

The first row shall be the header. The next rows contain the different components. The script reads over the data (line-by-line), checks for the schematic symbol in the file, defined in the script and create the component.

The parameters will be injected into the schematic symbol in the following way.

• Modify the header to UPPERCASE
• Substitute the ' ' characters with '-'
• Place '%%' to the beginning and to the end of the string

E.g. the data in the 'Parameter seconday' column will be injected to the schematic symbol '%%PARAMETER-SECONDARY%%' value.

Have a look on the example, make some trials and feel free to add more components and/or sheets.

Features to implement

The following features planned to be implemented in the near future.

• GUI to easier setup
• Different file format support (e.g. CSV)
• GUI to preview the components

License

GNU GPLv3