How to initialize your KiCAD 9 project on the command line

Note: This post is for KiCad 9, please check out How to initialize your KiCAD 10 project on the command line in case you are using KiCAD 10 (released in 2026).

TL;DR:

Inside the directory where you want to create the project, run

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ulikoehler/KiCAD-ProcessAutomation/master/InitializeKiCad9Project.sh | bash /dev/stdin MyProject

You should replace MyProject (at the end of the command) with your project name.

How it works

Our script is a simple bash script that creates the files that KiCAD creates when manually creating a new project.

It will create these files (MyProject is the default project name, but you can modify it using a command line argument):

• MyProject.kicad_pro: The project file
• MyProject.kicad_sch: The empty schematic
• MyProject.kicad_pcb: The empty PCB
• sym-lib-table: List of schematic symbol libraries for the project
• libraries/MyProject.kicad_sym: Schematic symbol library
• fp-lib-table: List of footprint libraries for the project
• libraries/footprints: The folder where project-specific footprints (.kicad_mod files) are stored
• libraries/3D: This folder should be used to store 3D models (e.g. STEP files)

The files are modelled after KiCAD 9.0.1 but we expect them to work with any recent KiCAD version.

See GitHub for the script source code

Run e.g. using

bash InitializeKiCad9Project.sh MyProject