KiCad's footprints, by default, deosn't put the resistor values on the  screen print layer for some reason. I understand this for SMDs but for resistors with leads it makes no sense at all. Why this is so I've no idea.

I'm still old school when it comes to PCB making, I use through hole components because they're easer to assemble into boards by hand and I can actually see them. They also tend not to blow away in the slightest draught from the open window. Assembling a PCB with no resistor values printed on the screen means I have to print the layout including the resistor values, then cross reference this to the actual PCB. This is a PITA AFAIAC.

I wrote a python script to move the values to the front silk layer and centre it between the pins. It's called via a bash script because an environment variable needs to be set up first and you can't do that from within the python script AFAIK. The files can be found here and here. It does the same for diodes and capacitors. The component reference still needs to screen printed as these are required after assembly for debugging purposes.

Obviously the paths in the scripts need to be changed to suit your KiCad installaton. Mine is compiled from the sources on GitHub so it's in my own personal program directory.

Last changed: 13. August, 2018 at 17:26

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