Actually Useful Schematics in KiCad - Andrew Greenberg

So many open source schematics are terrible: they give no context, they're hard to follow, and they're mindbogglingly inconsistent. You're trying to debug or just understand a system, but sometimes you can't even tell what's a system input and what's an output! Come listen to us rant about actually useful schematics, and help us bring beautiful, understandable, and useful schematics to the open source community. We'll discuss graphical design, design patterns, critical context clues, and then present guidelines to follow and checklists that will both make your schematics better and save you from errors. And, of course, we'll discuss how KiCAD makes this all fun and easy! Many of you are experts, so be prepared to share your schematic tips and tricks.

After decades of open source hardware development with commercial programs, we finally jumped ship to KiCAD three years and have never looked back. We've used KiCAD in hundreds of projects, including medical devices, a completely open source CubeSat system (https://www.oresat.org/), and literally hundreds of undergraduate and graduate student projects.

Links:
Schematic Checklist: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g...
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/...
Talk presented at KiCon North America, May 30, 2025 in San Diego, CA