PCB costs usually go by the square inch / centimeter and the number of layers, although specific types of finish may cost more. For me, looking at making an LCARS panel, I was inspired by a couple of websites noting the smaller door opening panels in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Due to copyright I cannot post a picture directly but I can link you to other maker efforts here and here. And one by a Star Trek Production Designer here. The first two use print on plexiglas and the second a dedicated LCD panel.

I knew I could make some very nice panels using techniques in my previous PCB guides mentioned on the Overview page. 

Realizing the Design

I opened Affinity Designer 2, a low cost vector graphics program. It allows various artwork to be placed in layers:

The final layers correspond to layers on the circuit board:

To design the front, I would want a background that is white. That maps to the Front Solder Mask. Then the black parts would be Front Silkscreen printed on the white. I wanted a logo that would "pop", so I designed my own, a bit different than some but still iconic, and that is in the Front Copper layer. The logo would be within a rounded square that had no silkscreen or solder mask, allowing it to be illuminated from behind, if desired, through the substrate layer.

Each element is built up. First was the outline which defined the shapes of the rest of the elements within. The "D" shaped keys with identification numbers were drawn next. On top of each key, I chose simple numbers rather than some LCARS panels with random numbers. Drawing ne key, I copy & pasted 4 more in a row down the board. I mirrored the "D" for the left side keys and copied them also.

The rounded square is a standard shape for the logo area and a rounded rectangle for a top Activate button (not functional in this build). The logo was traced from a design I found and scaled appropriately. This can be replaced if another logo is desired.

The final design has appropriate elements grouped into several defined layers, corresponding to the PCB layers above and named for using Winterbloom's free Gingerbread conversion tool, which takes an Affinity Designer file and generates the code to make a KiCad PCB program footprint file.

You can see my design below, load it into Affinity Designer 2 and see how I built up elements into definitions for each layer defined by Gingerbread.

For details on how I've been using Affinity Designer 2, see the previous guide Making Wearable Badge Art with Printed Circuit Boards which goes into more detail on using AD2.

Next, to go from Affinity Designer art to KiCad PCB art.