5. KiKit settings: mill radius, V-cut layer, copy numbering

Status: accepted, October 2026

Context

Panels are drawn with KiKit. Three of its defaults broke WholeBoard boards:

• KiKit rounds inside corners to the mill radius. With its default it closed up the 1 mm mains isolation slots.
• V-cuts drawn on Edge.Cuts would be milled through, not scored.
• Copies' references are renamed with {n}, which counts from 0, so the panel BOM and CPL must match.

Decision

• millradius is 0.5 mm, half the narrowest slot.
• V-cuts go on Cmts.User, which is exported with the panel Gerbers for JLCPCB.
• Copies are named {orig}_{n} (R1_0, R1_1 …), and panelize.copies() counts from 0 to match.
• Rails are 5 mm top and bottom, with three tooling holes (1.152 mm) and three fiducials. V-cuts for square corners; 3 mm tabs with mouse bites for rounded ones.

Consequences

• Slots survive panelisation, so mains boards can be panelled.
• KiKit runs on KiCad's Python (installed with uv --target into ~/.wholeboard/kikit-py), so it works with the Docker KiCad image, which has no pip.