How to initialize your KiCAD 8 project on the command line

TL;DR:

Inside the directory where you want to create the project, run

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ulikoehler/KiCAD-ProcessAutomation/master/InitializeKiCad8Project.sh | bash /dev/stdin MyProject

You should replace MyProject (at the end of the command) with your project name.

Note: This will initialize an empty KiCAD project without any libraries. This is equivalent to creating a new project in KiCAD itself (using the GUI).

How it works

Our script is a simple bash script that creates the files that KiCAD creates when manually creating a new project.

It will create these files (MyProject is the default project name, but you can modify it using a command line argument):

• MyProject.kicad_pro: The project file
• MyProject.kicad_sch: The empty schematic
• MyProject.kicad_pcb: The empty PCB
• sym-lib-table: List of schematic symbol libraries for the project
• libraries/MyProject.kicad_sym: Schematic symbol library
• fp-lib-table: List of footprint libraries for the project
• libraries/footprints: The folder where project-specific footprints (.kicad_mod files) are stored
• libraries/3D: This folder should be used to store 3D models (e.g. STEP files)

The files are modelled after KiCAD 8.0.1 but we expect them to work with any recent KiCAD version.

See GitHub for the script source code

Run e.g. using

bash InitializeKiCad8Project.sh MyProject