Custom PCB Silkscreens: Moving EAGLE CAD to Adobe Illustrator

The custom PCB silkscreens you see on many Adafruit boards avoid that common “CAD look” while making these devices easier to read and more enjoyable to use. Sadly there is no “make silkscreen” button — it’s quite a process to move a board from EAGLE CAD (offering only a minimal set of shapes) to Adobe Illustrator with its full complement of drawing and typographic tools.

This is just the first step in preparing a board for Illustrator. The actual design comes later. And if anything changes, this process must be repeated…there’s no direct, automatic re-conversion…at least not yet.

Shown in the video is the Feather RP2040 in its early stages.