metabuilder/pcbgenerator

PCB Generator Repository

This repository contains the BoardForge project, a Python based PCB generator.

Directory overview

.
├── boardforge/                        # Python package with PCB classes
├── fonts/                             # Font files used for text rendering
├── graphics/                          # Example SVG assets
├── examples/                          # Additional usage demos
├── output/                            # Generated Gerber previews
├── demo.py                            # Demo script
├── boardforge.log                     # Example log output
├── tests/                             # Pytest suite for BoardForge
├── requirements.txt                   # Python dependencies
└── pytest.ini                         # Pytest configuration

Log files such as boardforge.log may appear when running the demos.

Example scripts in the examples/ folder demonstrate advanced usage such as the arduino_like.py microcontroller board and the buck_boost_converter.py power module with display and buttons. The repository also adapts several of James Bowman's CuFlow project examples. Currently cuflow_demo.py and cuflow_clockpwr.py are available. The examples/dazzler.py script merges the various CuFlow Dazzler demos into a single comprehensive example. These scripts translate the original CuFlow commands into BoardForge's higher level PCB API, showing how similar layouts can be produced while crediting the original CuFlow work.

Setup scripts

Scripts in the scripts/ folder help install Python 3 and the required packages. Run the script that matches your platform from the repository root:

• scripts/setup_linux.sh – for Linux distributions using apt, yum, dnf, pacman or zypper
• scripts/setup_mac.sh – for macOS using Homebrew
• scripts/setup_windows.bat – for Windows using winget or Chocolatey

Each script checks for Python 3 and then installs requirements.txt.

Running the tests

Install the packages listed in requirements.txt before executing the test suite:

pip install -r requirements.txt
pytest

The example scripts require additional libraries such as Pillow, CairoSVG and Shapely, which are included in the dependency file. An optional requirements-dev.txt pins the package versions used in CI.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.