kicad render action

This action allows you to automatically render Images of your PCB and use them e.g. in a README.md

current state

This is using Kicad nightly since there is yet no Kicad release containing the image rendering command in the CLI.

Usage

1. Create the directory .github/workflows if it does not already exist.

2. Add a new yaml in that directory e.g. pcb_image.yaml

3. Adding the configuration. Set the path to your .kicad_pcb file (you may need to replace 'refs/heads/main' with 'refs/heads/master' on older repos)

   name: pcb_image
   on:
     push:
   jobs:
     render-image:
       name: render-image
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - name: Check out the repo
           uses: actions/checkout@v4
   
         - name: render pcb image
           uses: linalinn/kicad-render@main
           with:
           pcb_file: <path from repo root to .kicad_pcb>
           output_path: ${{ github.workspace }}/images
           
         - name: Setup Pages
           if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
           uses: actions/configure-pages@v3
   
         - name: Upload Artifact
           if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
           uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v1
           with:
           path: "images"
   
     deploy-pages:
       if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       needs: render-image
         
       permissions:
         pages: write
         id-token: write
   
       environment:
         name: github-pages
         url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
   
       steps:
         - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
           id: deployment
           uses: actions/deploy-pages@v2

4. Adding the images to an README.md

   # My first PCB with automatic image generation
   
   ### Images
   ![top](<github_username>.github.io/<repo_name>/top.png)
   ![bottom](<github_username>.github.io/<repo_name>/bottom.png)

5. Prepare the repo

   • Open your repo on GitHub
   • Open Setting
   • (Left side) Click on Pages
   • Under Build and deployment select for Source Github Action from the dropdown.

6. git commit and push

Example

You can find a example here in the m2sdr and the workflow for it here

Animation original code

The code for the Animation is from arturo182
Mastdon post with Gif and link to gist