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single: preflights

The preflight section

This section is used to specify tasks that will be executed before generating any output.

pair: supported; preflights

Here is an example of a preflight section:

preflight:
  run_erc: true
  update_xml: true
  run_drc: true
  check_zone_fills: true
  ignore_unconnected: false

pair: preflights; pcb_replace pair: preflights; sch_replace

More about pcb_replace and sch_replace

These options are supposed to be used in a version control environment. This is because, unlike other options, they modify the PCB and/or schematic and might damage them. In a version control environment you can just roll-back the changes.

Don’t be afraid, they make a back-up of the files and also tries to disable dangerous changes. But should be used carefully. They are ideal for CI/CD environment where you don’t actually commit any changes.

pair: filters; DRC and ERC errors

Filtering DRC and ERC errors

Sometimes KiCad reports DRC or ERC errors that you can’t get rid off. This could be just because you are part of a team including lazy people that doesn’t want to take the extra effort to solve some errors that aren’t in fact errors, just small violations made on purpose. In this case you could exclude some known errors.

For this you must declare filters entry in the preflight section. Then you can add as many filter entries as you want. Each filter entry has an optional description and defines to which error type is applied (number) and a regular expression that the error must match to be ignored (regex). Like this:

filters:
  - filter: 'Optional filter description'
    error: 'Error_type'
    regex:  'Expression to match'

Here is a KiCad 5 example, suppose you are getting the following errors:

** Found 1 DRC errors **
ErrType(4): Track too close to pad
    @(177.185 mm, 78.315 mm): Track 1.000 mm [Net-(C3-Pad1)] on F.Cu, length: 1.591 mm
    @(177.185 mm, 80.715 mm): Pad 2 of C3 on F.Cu and others

** Found 1 unconnected pads **
ErrType(2): Unconnected items
    @(177.185 mm, 73.965 mm): Pad 2 of C4 on F.Cu and others
    @(177.185 mm, 80.715 mm): Pad 2 of C3 on F.Cu and others

And you want to ignore them. You can add the following filters:

filters:
  - filter: 'Ignore C3 pad 2 too close to anything'
    error: '4'
    regex:  'Pad 2 of C3'
  - filter: 'Ignore unconnected pad 2 of C4'
    error: '2'
    regex:  'Pad 2 of C4'

If you need to match text from two different lines in the error message try using (?s)TEXT(.*)TEXT_IN_OTHER_LINE.

If you have two or more different options for a text to match try using (OPTION1|OPTION2).

A complete Python regular expressions explanation is out of the scope of this manual. For a complete reference consult the Python manual.

KiCad 6 uses strings to differentiate errors, use them for the error field. To keep compatibility you can use the number or error_number options for KiCad 5.

Note that this will ignore the errors, but they will be reported as warnings. If you want to suppress these warnings take a look at filter-kibot-warnings

Important note: this will create a file named kibot_errors.filter in the output directory.