Hi guys

I am learning KiCad today, and the help menu say micro via is "Ctrl + V", but when I pressed "Ctrl + V", I got nothing.

So how do I place a micro via?

Thanks

 

I got it, I need to enable the micro via option

 

Oh no, I still can't do micro via after I enable the option. any thought??

 

As a Kicad user and supporter I took it as a point of honor to figure this out, even though I have not nor intent to use a micro-via in my work.

A micro via or micro-via or microvia (I've seen it all ways) is a very small (LDO) (.1mm/.004inch typical) connection is a multilayer board. A hole is cut using a laser or (other very controllable process) between an outer layer and the layer directly below it. The prepreg board thickness needs to be of the order of the micro-via diameter so the technique is limited to multilayer boards.

With this limitation enabling micro-vias in Kicad takes two steps. From the menu click:

Design Rules | Design Rules: Global Design Rules tab click "Allow micro vias."

Design Rules | Layer Setup: increase Copper Layers to greater then 2.

Once you do these steps when drawing a trace you can press V to place a via, and CTRT-V to place a micro-via.

(This took me a while as I am breaking in a new computer and had to download Kicad into this machine. Sorry for the delay but I kept your post up till I got this.)

 

Hi ErnieM

Thank you for taking the time to find these out for me, it looks like I am poking on something I have no idea of. (I am justing assuming micro via is just a via but smaller, and I can use it just like a normal via)

I was doing it on a simply 2 layers board and of course it doesn't work.

KiCad is great btw, after trying Eagle, Design Spark and Altium (this is great too but too expensive).