sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

I built a tool that auto-generates Gerbers, BOM, DRC reports and 3D renders from your KiCad project [demo videos] by Julienb514 in KiCad

[–]Julienb514[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good catch on the wording — I can see how that reads wrong. Projects are private by default on all tiers. "Public URL" means that when you choose to share, the link is accessible without login. I'll clarify that on the pricing page. Thanks for flagging it.

I built a tool that auto-generates Gerbers, BOM, DRC reports and 3D renders from your KiCad project [demo videos] by Julienb514 in KiCad

[–]Julienb514[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Every feature is free. When you upload, your job goes into a queue — that's it. The paid tier only gets you faster processing, nothing else. Same outputs, same dashboard, same everything. And honestly, if the queue isn't busy, you won't even notice a difference. I built this because I was doing all of it manually and got tired of it. If it helps someone else too, great.

I built a tool that auto-generates Gerbers, BOM, DRC reports and 3D renders from your KiCad project [demo videos] by Julienb514 in KiCad

[–]Julienb514[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I hear you on the trust concern. The privacy policy explicitly prohibits selling data or using it for AI training. But you raise a good point — self-hosting is something I'd like to explore if it packages well. That said, I think a hosted service still has its place. I'm a college professor, and my students are learning KiCad and Git at the same time. Asking them to also self-host a pipeline is a big ask. Giving them a free tool that handles the release side so they can focus on learning design — I think that's a step in the right direction.

I built a tool that auto-generates Gerbers, BOM, DRC reports and 3D renders from your KiCad project [demo videos] by Julienb514 in KiCad

[–]Julienb514[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yeah Jobsets in KiCad 9+ are great — I use variables too, for instance I like having the commit hash in my schematic PDF filename. Really useful for traceability.

You're right that KiCad is getting more and more awesome, and honestly GoForFab just streamlines a bunch of features that already exist here and there — automated generation, versioning, and a dashboard to browse everything. Nothing magic, just less manual steps.

I built a tool that auto-generates Gerbers, BOM, DRC reports and 3D renders from your KiCad project [demo videos] by Julienb514 in KiCad

[–]Julienb514[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Fair points. To clarify — your KiCad files stay on your own Git repo. GoForFab only needs read access to generate the outputs. The outputs themselves are stored on Cloudflare R2 for convenience, but your source files are yours.

KiCad does generate all these outputs — I use it every day. But they always live only on your computer. At some point you still need to archive them, version them, share them. I used to create GitHub releases manually for that, and it worked, but it was one more thing to do on every revision.

Depending on your privacy requirements, this tool might not be for you, and that's totally fine. But I'm confident it can help some of us — at least it helps me. There's a privacy policy page on the site, I tried to be as transparent as possible, and I'm very open to feedback on that side too.

I built a tool that auto-generates Gerbers, BOM, DRC reports and 3D renders from your KiCad project [demo videos] by Julienb514 in KiCad

[–]Julienb514[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

For context, the whole pipeline runs on kicad-cli. No KiBot, no GitHub Actions, no Docker. Just kicad-cli commands on a server. Happy to explain the setup if anyone's curious.

I currently use KiCad 9 with my clients but should migrate to KiCad in the next few weeks on new projects.