<pcb-art/>

Community silkscreen art for your PCBs, curated by robrotics.

Browse and vote in the gallery at robrotics.web.app/pcb-art — every merged piece shows up there automatically.

Using a piece

Each piece ships as a KiCad footprint (.kicad_mod) and/or an SVG source:

• KiCad — the whole gallery as one library: clone this repo (or download it as a zip) and its ready-made robrotics-art.pretty/ folder is a complete footprint library holding every piece — add it once (see next bullet) and git pull to get new art. The folder is regenerated by CI on every merge.
• KiCad: the .kicad_mod files are kicads footprint files. They are usually stored in "libraries" (folders/directories holding .kicad_mods which you can import by (in pcb editor top left, preferences->manage footprint libraries-> choose global or project-specific->add existing. and choose a folder/directory containing the .kicad_mod files you want to put into your pcb. Done this way you can have them stored by kicad and just throw them on any pcb you want just like you would any other part ("A" to place footprint and find your library) Done this way they can also easily hold layer information, ie use more layers to get more colors. Done this way they are not scalable as far as I know though.
• SVG: The simplest way is to import via KiCad's vector graphics import in the pcb editor: (ctrl-shift-f or file->import->graphics) and select the layer you want it on. SVGs imported this way can be scaled up and down, at least in KiCad 10. Each import can only import one layer though most people usually just import it as front silkscreen. SVGs can also be done using gerbolyze https://github.com/jaseg/gerbolyze.

Submitting your art

1. Fork this repo.
2. Add a folder art/<your-slug>/ (lowercase letters, digits, dashes) containing:
   • piece.json — copy art/_template/piece.json and fill it in
   • (optional) a preview image — preview.svg (preferred) or preview.png. The preview must contain only the artwork itself — white/cream strokes on a transparent background, no board behind it. The gallery draws a green PCB behind your art automatically. If you skip the preview, the gallery shows your first .svg source file as-is (the card gets a small info note saying so) — so a piece with only .kicad_mod sources still needs one.
   • the art itself — at least one .kicad_mod or .svg source file
   • (optional) photo.jpg / photo.jpeg / photo.png — a photo of the art on a real manufactured board. If present, the gallery shows your photo instead of the rendered preview.
3. Open a pull request. CI validates the folder; a maintainer reviews and merges.

piece.json fields:

{
  "title": "Robro Bot",
  "author": "your name or handle",
  "description": "optional one-liner shown on the card",
  "tags": ["robot", "mascot"]
}

How this repo works

index.json at the root is the machine-readable gallery manifest. CI regenerates it on every merge to main (see scripts/build-index.js and .github/workflows/index.yml) — don't edit it by hand. The website reads it plus the art files straight from this repo; votes live on the website.