Tutorial 04

From Board to a Fabbable KiCad

You described a board in plain English and Circuitcaster built it. This is what happens next — export it, develop a real KiCad project from that export, and route the copper until it is ready to manufacture. One board, start to finish.

Part 1 Add power · build the board Part 2 Develop a KiCad from the export Part 3 Route it · fabbable

SERIES Design to Fab TIME ~5 min ENDS WITH A fully routed board

Picks up where Tutorial 03 leaves off. New here? Start with Tutorial 3: Creating a Circuit with AI to get a board on your canvas — then bring it here and take it all the way to fab.

Part One

01 Add the power, build the board

Tell the AI how the board should get its power. It adds a screw terminal, makes the rails 5 V-friendly, and lays the whole board out in Circuitcaster — no part hunting, no datasheets.

The 555 circuit wired in Circuitcaster with a 5V screw terminal

STEP 01

Tell it about the power

You have a working circuit. Just say what you want: add a 2-pin screw terminal for a 5 V power hookup, and make the board 5 V-friendly. The AI drops in J1 5V IN, wires +5V and GND to the rails, and keeps every part in range — you never touch a part number.

The board laid out on a real outline in Circuitcaster Board view

STEP 02

Build the board

Flip to Board view and every part sits on a real board outline — the NE555, its resistors and caps, the LED, the light sensor, and the new screw terminal — each one to scale and labeled. This is your board, ready to leave the app.

Tip: everything is placed at real millimetre positions, so what you see here is what lands in KiCad.

Part Two

02 Develop a KiCad from the export

One tap exports a complete KiCad project — schematic, PCB, footprints, and a real BOM. Hand that export to an AI and it develops a proper, openable project you can take to any fab.

The raw KiCad export rendered in 3D: parts placed, no copper traces yet

The raw export — every part placed, no copper yet.

STEP 03

Export, then hand it off

Hit Export and Circuitcaster hands you a full KiCad project. Open it and every part is exactly where you placed it — but bare: no copper between the pads, no board graphics. That is the honest starting point. Hand the export to an AI (Codex, Claude, ChatGPT) and tell it to develop a real KiCad project from it.

Tip: the export ships with a self-describing JSON, so any AI can read the design directly — no extra context needed.

Part Three

03 Route it — until it is fabbable

The AI draws copper for every connection, adds the finishing silkscreen, checks the design rules, and produces Gerbers. What comes out is not a drawing — it is a board you can order.

The board routed in the KiCad PCB Editor, red copper traces connecting every pad

Routed in KiCad — every net connected in copper.

STEP 04

Route the copper

In KiCad, the AI draws a real trace for every connection on the netlist — 35 tracks, zero unconnected nets. Those red lines are the actual copper that gets etched onto the board. This is the step that turns a placement into a circuit.

The finished board rendered in 3D: copper, part outlines, labels, board outline

The finished board — routed, silkscreened, ready to fab.

STEP 05

A finished, fabbable board

Copper, part outlines, silkscreen labels, and a clean board edge — a complete board. From here it is Gerbers and an order to JLCPCB, PCBWay, OSHPark, or any fab you like. The thing you described in plain English is now a physical product you can hold.

Same board, two hours apart

Plain English in. A manufacturable PCB out. This is the whole distance you just travelled.

01 · Raw export

Before: the bare KiCad export, no copper

03 · Fully routed

Your turn

Design it. Route it. Order it.

Build a board in plain English, export it, and let an AI take it all the way to Gerbers. You make the calls — it does the fiddly parts.

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