Simple schematic converter, viewer, and editor. Upload your electrical schematic and CAD files to quickly convert them to another format. Our schematic viewer lets you edit, share, and embed your design. If you don’t have a schematic file to upload, click “Create Schematics” to start from scratch in our online editor. Navigate to the.bmp image you have saved and import it; The image will be attached with the mouse place it wherever you want and resize if required. That’s it you can import any image you want to place on the PCB but first you have to convert it to Monochromatic Bitmap format. After placing and re-sizing the image the Board looks like as below.
For PCB design I use the open-source schematic and PCB design software KiCAD. Its a great program and has gotten a lot better recently. It is unlimited in size, components and number of layers and has lots of the features of very expensive professional PCB layout software.
But… there are times when its not so obvious how to do what seems like simple tasks. One task I needed to do recently was to add a logo onto the silkscreen and the back copper layer of a PCB. This is a quick post collecting my experiences and the a procedure to do this.
Edit 27/6/2020: I realised this was a very heavily visited page on this website! I would now use the awesome svg2shenzhen add-on to Inkscape to create any layer KiCAD module from any SVG file. This is covered in detail in an article in this issue of Hackspace Magazine (free to download!)
Edit 1/12/2020: Link to module scaler site has been removed as it was taken over by a scam site. Please use above svg2shenzhen link above.
The steps involved are:
- Sort out your logo
- Add a white boundary around the logo
- Export as a .png or .bmp
- Use the bitmap2Component section of KiCAD to convert into a .mod file
- Resize the image, using an on-line conversion tool
- Remove the ‘bug’ section from the .mod code
- Use the library in your PCB design and import the module
I’ll go through them in more detail:
The first thing to do is sort out your logo. I use Inkscape or CorelDraw to create .svg images. You can also use any image file.
Add a white background to your image. There MUST be a white border all around your image. (This is required to sort out a bug later in the process….)
Export this as a .png or .bmp.
Open the ‘Bitmap2Component’ part of the KiCAD suite of utilities. This will open the Bitmap to Component converter.
![Converter Converter](/uploads/1/1/8/9/118937061/188485105.jpg)
Image To Pcb Layout Converter Tool
This is the Bitmap2Component utility.
Load your logo bitmap/image file. In this example I have the open source hardware image. Its really big, hence you can only see a bit of it. It is best to use a large image and then scale it down, rather than use a small image where you will loose some of the detail.
Ensure this is set to ‘Negative’ and that the threshold level is correct (this is the level it converts to black or white). A negative image is required – the output will be anything WHITE in the image.
Save as a .mod module library. Save it somewhere where you will find it again.
Then we need to scale the image to the size required on your PCB. You will need to measure the size required, as you cannot scale this within KiCAD PCB. Luckily some clever folk have done an on-line KiCAD module scaler, which can be found here (Link now broken – Not now available). In this case I am making the image to be 0.4 inches (around 10mm). Here you can also choose which layer you would like the component to be on. I used both back copper (layer 0) and front silkscreen (layer 21).
Note 1/12/2020: These instructions are now redudant and the component scaler is no longer available through the link I had. Please use information at the top of this page.
Scroll to the bottom of the page, browse for your module library. You will also need the new width (in inches) and a name for your new module library (I tend to use the same name but with “_small” added).
Save as another module (.mod) library file.
Now lets have a look at it. You need to add this library to your PCB (go to preferences -> libraries and then use the ‘Add’ function). As you can see in this screen shot, there are two lines on the left and top edges. This is a problem with the ‘Bitmap2Component’ conversion software.
Click on the ‘Add module’ icon, as we want to add the new logo module.
Find it within the module list.
Urgh! What are those nasty lines doing?…..
Its been reported as a bug, but not yet fixed (13/12/12). So now what do you do?
The answer to this took me a bit of searching but, as usual, someone on the interweb (specifically this post) had done it before me. Basically the algorithm is ‘seeing’ the edge and creating a polygon. Using a white border around the logo means that this polygon is separate from the other polygon and so we can delete it.
All modules are text files with lists of the shapes and the co-ordinates between the points. So go to where your .mod file is saved and open the file with some kind of text editor:
Open up the .mod file as with a text editor.
The first polygon is the offending bit of code (highlighted in red). Delete the whole polygon section (from the DP line, including all the Dl lines, to just above the next DP line) and save it (I use the same name).
You can see (honest!) that each polygon starts with the line DP x x x x x x. There are then a load of Dl x x commands. Basically DP means Draw Polygon and the Dl are all the points within the polygon. The first polygon (DP) is the error section. We have to delete it and then save the file.
Now go back to your PCB and re-open the module:
The top logo is the one with the error, the bottom is the nice clean one without the lines. Yey!
You can see that the ‘bug’ lines have gone and you now have a nice logo to add to your board. Hope that helps you – I certainly had a couple of hours of head scratching.
I found a good youtube video explaining most of this after I had finished doing it and I was writing this post.
Update 3/7/14: There is another program to create KiCad modules from logos here: http://img2mod.wayneandlayne.com/
How to convert an image to a circuit board
by seer on Sep.05, 2010, under My gadgets
EDA tools are not excellent at drawing complex curves and shapes. So it is almost impossible for us to design the board aesthetically. Although other design software is strong at painting, most of them use a bitmap which can not be accepted by EDA tools. So with additional intermediate tools, we can use bitmap paints to build our board.
We need:
We need:
Protel 99SE SP6 (EDA tool as long as it can receive CAD format)
Photoshop
Vector Magic
Image To Pcb Layout Converter Dwg
Illustrator
Autocad
Bmp to Pcb
I use this image as an example:
Image To Pcb Layout Converter Freeware
Since it is a bitmap image, we need to convert it to vector to edit it in illustrator. In order to save some time in this step, the full shape can be painted black. Besides, the image can be smoothed and turned B/W to get more accurate result.
Then Vector Magic can convert it into a vector image.
Now the image can be edited by Illustrator. Use “Direct select tool” to select the shape and remove the filling. The outline will be remained
And it can be exported to AutoCad format:
The box around the shape can be removed in AutoCad. Then the outline should be exploded to undividable elements. It should look like this if you select all:
One unit equals to one millimeter in default setting. The shape can be resized to meet our need. Here I set it to 78 units and export it to DXF format.
Be aware that “R12/LT2” is the only format which can be recognized by Protel 99se.
Select proper layer in importing process. Choose metric units.
The outline of the board will be generated.
Then we can add the rest of the image to get better result. The board’s length is 78mm, 3070mil. And the BMP2PCB uses segments to form the shapes in PCB. So the required resolution equals to the length divided by the width of segments. If 6mil’s width is used, 3070/6=512 pixels are needed.
Save as BMP and convert it to PCB:
The PCB file can be opened in EDA tool.
Paste it to the right position in the outline.
Here it is. Electrical wires and components can be added on this manufacturable board.