KiCad Onboarding

Welcome to the Electrical team's KiCad onboarding. This replaces the Altium onboarding: Reality Labs boards are designed in KiCad 10, with one shared parts library that every project carries as a git submodule. By the end you will have set up KiCad with that library, made a real part (symbol, footprint, 3D model), submitted it to the library as a pull request, and placed it on a board.

Time to complete: 3 to 5 hours.

Before you start

Join the Discord server and open a thread in #onboarding-posts. Ask there when you get stuck.
Ask a lead to add your GitHub account to the uwrealitylabs organization. You need it to push a branch.
Install Git. Install KiCad 10. Document 1 walks through both.
Have a terminal you are comfortable in (PowerShell, Terminal.app, or any Linux shell).

Documents

Documents 3 to 6 build one real part end to end: the AP2210K-3.3, a 300 mA LDO from Diodes in a SOT-23-5 package. Follow along with that part first, then repeat the flow with a part your project needs.

When you are done

Ping an EE lead (@Vincent Xie) in Discord #onboarding-posts with the link to your pull request. We go through your symbol and footprint against the datasheet together, then you are on the team.

Where things live

Library: github.com/uwrealitylabs/kicad-library (symbols, footprints, 3D models, templates)