pcb - part 3.
So just now I generated the gerber files and sent them to the manufacturer. This is the preview from his web:
The schematic drawing went OK at the end, considered how tired I felt at the time of the last post.
Next were the footprints - the KiCad library was missing footprint for my 3.5 mm jack connector, so I took out a ruler and started measuring its dimensions. At the end I found out that even the shittiest chinese connectors from aliexpress have a datasheet if you know the name of the component. Also some good people created footprint for DIN-5 "MIDI" connector.
Rest of the components had "standard" footprints, but it's really confusing to go looking for "standard ceramic cap" footprint or "standard resistor" footprint, because the KiCad footprint library doesn't have popularity meter next to the components and there isn't a shopkeeper that would just dutifully nod head at a request for "standard Arduino power jack".
Next went the PCB design. I found out a local PCB manufacturer that has good prices, but he cannot do "plated through-holes" - which means that the two sides of board aren't connected through the hole itself and components have to be soldered on both sides if such connection is desired.
So I designed the board to be one-sided. And it was quite a feat to get everything layed out. The planarity itself wasn't a problem, but between two pins there is usually space only for one trace. In the end I had to draw it on piece of paper to "speed up" the design, but I managed. Also, thank god for "GND copper fill".
I generated gerbers.
Fortunately before sending it off to manufacturer, I showed it to people on ##music-electronics IRC channel on Freenode and they pointed out to me few fatal errors in my design (like barrel jack pointing towards MCU instead of out etc.) which saved me one revision of PCB (thanks to dingwat and antto!).
So I sent it to manufacturer and I'm curious what comes back.