Know the workspace

If you’ve never designed a circuit board, start here. Ten minutes of orientation, no steps to follow. Every picture is the real app.

Part 1 of the path~10 min readNo experience assumed

What a PCB is

A printed circuit board is a sandwich of fiberglass and copper. Parts (chips, resistors, connectors) sit on it. Each part’s metal contact patches are its pads. Pads that must be electrically joined belong to the same net, and the copper lines that join them are traces. You design the board, send files to a factory, and get boards in the mail. PCB Canvas is the design step, on an iPad.

The workspace

The full PCB Canvas workspace: mode rail on the left, board canvas in the centre, parts panel on the right, status at the top — 1 Modes. Select, Route, Trace Edit, Place, Draw, Measure. One is always active; it decides what your touch means. · 2 The canvas, your board. Pinch to zoom, two fingers to pan, one finger (or Pencil) to act. · 3 Panels, the parts on the board, history, nets, and Problems. · 4 Status, what format the document speaks, how many connections remain, what needs fixing. · 5 Quick view controls, fit, names, layers.

Parts arrive with their circuit

Chips rarely work alone. Nearly every one needs small companion parts, mostly capacitors and resistors, wired to specific pins. Datasheets call this the support circuit, and in most tools you build it by hand. Here, placing a chip offers its support circuit: each required part named, bound to the right pins, placed with one tap. Where real designs disagree, the app shows the options with counts from real boards and lets you pick.

A support offer: required capacitors and a resistor placed, each marked Placed with its pins named — A charger chip’s support offer after Place All. Each required part shows which pins it serves and that it has been placed.

Routing

Connections that don’t exist yet show as thin guide lines, called the ratsnest. You make them real in Route: drag copper with a finger or the Pencil, or let Auto-route propose copper for everything left and apply it in one tap. The router moves other traces out of the way rather than refusing, and the status bar counts down the remaining connections.

Design rule checking

Design rules cover how close copper may get, how wide traces must be, and what a factory can drill. The app checks them continuously while you work. The Problems panel names each issue in plain words, with a button that moves the view to it. Findings never block you from working; they stay visible until fixed or accepted.

The Problems panel listing unfinished connections by net name — Four unfinished connections, each named by net, each with a locate button.

What you get out

Two things, both industry standard. A KiCad file, the open desktop EDA format, so the design is portable. And a manufacturing package: Gerbers (the copper artwork, one file per layer), drill files, a parts list, and placement coordinates. Both are generated and verified on the iPad and can be uploaded to a board factory as-is.

Terms the guides use

Word	Meaning
`footprint`	The pattern of pads a part needs on the board, its physical landing site.
`net`	A named set of pads that must all be connected (GND, VCC, …).
`via`	A plated hole that carries a trace from one copper layer to another.
`pour`	A filled copper region, usually ground, flooding the spare space.
`DRC`	Design-rule check, the continuous inspection behind the Problems panel.
`Gerber`	The file format factories read; one per copper/silk/mask layer.