kicad render action

This action allows you to automatically render Images of your PCB and use them e.g. in a README.md

current state

Rendering Image and Animations is working but the 3D models for Kicad are missing since the official docker image does not contain the config that was created at the first start-up. 3D Models provided by Kicad are now also rendered.

Even animations are rendered fine I wasn't able to embed them into a README.md

Also, this is using Kicad nightly since there is yet no Kicad release containing the image rendering command in the CLI.

Usage

1. Create the directory .github/workflows if it does not already exist.

2. Add a new yaml in that directory e.g. pcb_image.yaml

3. Adding the configuration. Set the path to your .kicad_pcb file (you may need to replace 'refs/heads/main' with 'refs/heads/master' on older repos)

   name: pcb_image
   on:
       push:
   jobs:
       render-image:
           name: render-image
           runs-on: ubuntu-latest
           steps:
           - name: Check out the repo
               uses: actions/checkout@v4
   
           - name: render pcb image
               uses: linalinn/kicad-render@main
               with:
               pcb_file: <path from repo root to .kicad_pcb>
               output_path: ${{ github.workspace }}/images
               
           - name: Setup Pages
               if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
               uses: actions/configure-pages@v3
   
           - name: Upload Artifact
               if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
               uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v1
               with:
               path: "images"
   
       deploy-pages:
           if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
           runs-on: ubuntu-latest
           needs: render-image
           
           permissions:
           pages: write
           id-token: write
   
           environment:
           name: github-pages
           url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
   
           steps:
           - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
               id: deployment
               uses: actions/deploy-pages@v2

4. Adding the images to an README.md

   # My first PCB with automatic image generation
   
   ### Images
   ![top](<github_username>.github.io/<repo_name>/top.png)
   ![bottom](<github_username>.github.io/<repo_name>/bottom.png)

5. Prepare the repo

   • Open your repo on GitHub
   • Open Setting
   • (Left side) Click on Pages
   • Under Build and deployment select for Source Github Action from the dropdown.

6. git commit and push

Example

You can find a example here in the m2sdr and the workflow for it here

Animation original code

The code for the Animation is from arturo182
Mastdon post with Gif and link to gist