Uploading Your Board

Once you've finished designing your board it's time to let FlashPCB take over. Upload your designs here. We only support Autodesk Eagle, Fusion 360 and KiCad at this time but are working to support other CAD programs in the near future.

Required files

Autodesk Eagle / Fusion 360

Board file ending in .brd
Schematic file ending in .sch

If you've designed your board in Fusion 360 you can upload your design by exporting your project as type "EAGLE 9.X brd compatible Files (*.brd)".

KiCad

The .kicad_pcb board file
All .kicad_sch schematics associated with the project
- Note that we cannot work with .sch (EESchema Schematic File Version 4) files. Please convert your schematics to the latest schematic file format.

Running design rule checks

We run a suite of design rule checks against your board to try to determine if your board is manufacturable. Design rule checks can have three results:

✓ Passed: The design rule check completed successfully with nothing to report.
⚠️ Warn: The design rule check completed successfully but there may be some impact to our ability to manufacture your board. Pay attention to the warning messages to see how your board may have been impacted.
❌ Error: The design rule check completed unsuccessfully.

Not all errors will prevent us from manufacturing your board; our design rule checks are fairly conservative. So if you pass these conservative checks we can confidently manufacture boards within our lead times. If your design fails some of these checks you will be able to continue through the checkout process. However, we will manually review your design and your lead time will not begin until we approve your design.

Board previews

We generate a series of preview images of your board to give you visual confirmation of the board design. We generate a top and bottom preview that appear the same way as they would if the board were in your hand. We also generate a series of previews from the various layers of your board. These layer previews all have the same orientation, from the perspective of the top of the board.

Bill of materials

Our interface allows you to search for any part that is generally available from the major distributors. We ensure that the parts you select are in stock and available so that once you complete your order we can assemble your board within the quoted lead time.

Using the FlashPCB Library

If you use the FlashPCB library, our AI inspects your board design and uses the device set, package, and Value text of each component in your design to identify the specific part from our inventory that best satisfies the intentions of your design. If a component is unable to be placed (i.e. it did not satisfy a particular design rule check) it will be marked do not populate and you will see a message explaining why the component could not be populated.

While our AI takes its best guess at which component best satisfies your design, you may want to update the selected component. Our interface allows you to select a different part from our inventory that can be placed on the footprint you used in your design. We provide filters for you to use in this interface to help you search for our inventory for your desired part. If you cannot find the part that you are looking for you can either mark the part as do not populate and we will leave it unpopulated or you can reach out to us via our contact form and we will try to add the part as soon as possible.

In order to finish generating the bill of materials and receive a quote for your board every component in the bill of materials must either have a component selected for it or you must mark that component as do not populate.

Getting a quote

Most of the time we will be able to provide an instant quote for you once you have approved your bill of materials. This quote is final and does not change. However, there are certain cases where we will not be able to provide you with an instant quote and will instead need to manually quote your design.

If your board is above 4 layers, we will need to manually quote your design.

Checkout

This is the final step of the ordering process. In this stage you will be able to see your board quote and select the type of shipping you would like for you order. Your board will be ready to ship within the lead time you've selected.

Quotes expire three days after they are created, but can be easily re-generated by re-approving the Bill of Materials.

Using coupons

You may have coupons available to your account. You can apply a coupon during the checkout process and each coupon can only be used once. You can only apply a single coupon to your order.