PcbDraw is a stand-alone CLI tool. It is not an action plugin for KiCAD and therefore, it has no menu inside Pcbnew. PcbDraw is compatible with both, KiCAD v5 and v6. However, on Windows and MacOS it works only with v6 (due to limitations in KiCAD).
PcbDraw is distributed as a Python package. On most of the Linux distributions you just have to install KiCAD and then install PcbDraw via Pip:
pip install PcbDraw # Use pip or pip3 based on your distribution
If you would like to use the upstream (unstable) version of PcbDraw, you can install it directly from GitHub:
pip3 install git+https://github.com/yaqwsx/PcbDraw@master
PcbDraw also requires either Inkscape 1.x or librsvg installed to perform
conversion from vector to rater images. The executables inkscape or
rsvg-convert have to be in PATH. Optionally, you can specify environmental
variables PCBDRAW_INKSCAPE or PCBDRAW_RSVG with paths to the tools. If they
are set, PcbDraw will use these paths.
On Windows, you have to use KiCAD v6 and also, you have to install Inkscape 1.x. PcbDraw doesn't work with Inkscape 0.9x. To install PcbDraw on Windows, you have to open "KiCAD Command Prompt". You can find it in the start menu:
Once you have it open like this:
you can put command in there and confirm them by pressing enter. This is also the prompt from which you will invoke all PcbDraw's CLI commands. They, unfortunately, does not work in an ordinary Command prompt due to the way KiCAD is packaged on Windows.
Then you have to enter:
pip install PcbDraw
Now you can test that it works:
pcbdraw --helpYou should get a help menu.
All further invocations of PcbDraw have to be made from KiCAD Command Prompt, not the regular command prompt.
Simply follow the guide for running KiKit inside a docker container as the KiKit image contains also PcbDraw.