Prepare a panel for fabrication

How it works

1. Design your panel in any vector editor, in millimetres.
2. Put each part of the design on a layer (or group) named after the KiCad layer it belongs to. See the table below.
3. Export the whole thing as one SVG or PDF.
4. Drop it onto Faceplate. It converts instantly and shows you a 2D and 3D preview plus a verification report.
5. Fix anything the report flags, re-export, and drop it again.
6. Download the .kicad_pcb and open it in KiCad, or send it straight to your fab.

Not sure where to start? Open the Vamp example on the home screen and download its source files to see a correctly set-up design.

Layer names

Faceplate maps your named layers onto KiCad layers. Name them exactly as below. The names match KiCad’s own layer names, so anything that isn’t recognised is simply ignored.

Front layers (F.) face the player; back layers (B.) are what you’d see from inside the case. A one-sided panel just uses the front layers.

Board outline

The Edge.Cuts layer defines the physical board. The outermost closed path is the panel edge; any closed path inside it becomes a cutout (a routed opening: slots, windows, or oversized jack cutouts). Use plain closed shapes, not open strokes.

Drills & holes

Everything on the Drills layer becomes a non-plated hole, at the exact position and size you drew it:

• A circle becomes a round drilled hole.
• A fully-rounded slot (a stadium: straight sides, semicircular ends) becomes an oval / obround drill.
• Any other shape, like a rounded rectangle or an ellipse, can’t be drilled, so Faceplate routes it to shape on Edge.Cuts instead, exactly as drawn. Rounded internal corners are fine; a router just needs a radius it can follow.

This is deliberate: the tool preserves the shape you intended rather than silently forcing it into a circle or slot.

Soldermask

The mask layers work the way they do in KiCad: they’re inverted. The shapes you draw on F.Mask / B.Mask are the openings, the places where the soldermask coat is removed and bare copper shows through. Everywhere else, the board keeps its coloured coat.

In the preview you’ll see this directly: the board is a solid soldermask colour, and your mask shapes appear as gold exposed copper. If you want a gold logo on a green panel, draw the logo on the mask layer over a copper pour.

Units & scale

Design in millimetres. Faceplate reads the real dimensions from your file, so a 128.5 mm-tall artboard comes in as a 128.5 mm board. For the cleanest export, set your editor’s document units to mm; in some tools setting a high DPI (e.g. 2540 DPI, 1000 dots/mm) avoids rounding on tiny features.

If a board comes out the wrong size, the export usually lost its real dimensions (a DPI or unit mismatch in the editor). Set the document to millimetres and re-export; Faceplate reads the size straight from the file. A PDF is the safe bet, since it always carries its physical size.

Exporting from your editor

Whatever the tool, aim for one flat vector file with real geometry: no live text, no effects, no embedded rasters.

Affinity (Designer / Studio)

• Export as SVG or PDF.
• Convert text to curves before exporting.
• Flatten transforms and don’t rasterise; keep everything as vectors.

Illustrator

• Save as SVG (or PDF), millimetres.
• Outline your text (Type → Create Outlines).

Inkscape

• Set the document units to mm.
• Object → Object to Path for all text.
• Save as Plain SVG.

What gets checked

When your board reads as a Eurorack 3U panel, Faceplate verifies the things that most often cost a re-fab:

• Panel height: 128.5 mm, the Eurorack standard.
• Width: a whole number of HP (1 HP = 5.08 mm).
• Mounting holes: positioned on the rail grid, with the usual two-per-rail fixing so the module sits square.

Findings are graded like traffic lights: green passed, gold worth a look, red must fix. Faceplate spots a 3U panel from its height, so there’s nothing to set. If your panel isn’t 128.5 mm tall, it asks whether to treat it as a generic panel and skip the Eurorack-specific checks.