Clear the design-rule check, then export your fab's files.
Your layout is done and DRC-clean to your fab's rules: you set them in Board Setup before you routed. Two things still stand between it and a box of boards: one last rules check, in case a late edit slipped something past you, and a file export that has to be exactly right, because the fab builds precisely what you send, no more and no less.
Hands on: confirm nothing slipped after your last clean run.
Your rules were set in Board Setup and your layout already passed DRC. This is the final confirmation that nothing changed.
You loaded your fab's rules back in Board Setup and routed inside them, so your layout is already clean against PCBWay, the shop that will build it. Here you simply confirm it: run one more time and expect zero errors. Its job now is to catch anything that slipped after your last clean run: a part you nudged, a trace you tweaked, a pour you refilled. A clearance the fab can't make is a short waiting to happen across a whole batch, so you don't hand off until this comes up clean.
Fills go stale the moment you nudge a part, and the parity test catches a schematic edit you never pushed across with F8.
Check yourself
DRC flags a 5-mil clearance where the fab requires 6. Ship it anyway?
Read this: Gerbers are what the board house builds from, not your design file.
Gerbers are what the board house actually reads, not your design file.
A set is one file per layer (each copper layer, the , the silkscreen) plus a drill file: the precise recipe for your board. Export them and zip the whole set (Gerbers + drill) into one archive (that's the file you upload to the fab), then open them in a Gerber viewer and actually look. It's your last chance to catch a mirrored layer, a missing mask opening, or a forgotten copper pour before the mistake becomes a batch of bad boards.
Hands on: plot the layers, generate the drill, zip the whole set.
One dialog makes the whole set, Gerbers plus drill files, twelve files in all, that you then zip and upload.
One dialog plots every layer, a second writes the drill file, and a zip of the two is the whole recipe the fab reads. Match these settings once (KiCad remembers them), and every export after this is a couple of clicks.
Open the Gerbers in a viewer and look before you upload.
Want to be sure your Gerbers came out right? Download the reference set and open it next to yours in the viewer: same board, correctly exported. Diff the layers; anything that looks different is worth understanding before you spend money. (It's also your safety net at ORDERING: if you'd rather not bet a board on your own export, you can order these.)
Do this
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Check yourself
Your Gerber viewer shows the top silkscreen mirrored. Safe to send it?
A set is a stack of flat 2D drawings, one file per physical layer: the front copper, two inner copper ground planes, the back copper, the for each side (the green coating, with openings where the pads are), the silkscreen (the white labels), and the paste layer (where a stencil would lay down solder). Riding alongside is a drill file, historically called Excellon, listing every hole's position and diameter, plus a board-outline file telling the fab where to cut, and a small job file (.gbrjob) naming your stackup and layer order, which is what stops In1 and In2 being built the wrong way round. The format is decades old and deliberately literal: it describes shapes and nothing else, so there's no ambiguity about what gets built. That's why you open them in a viewer before ordering: the viewer shows you the actual board, not your hopeful design intent.
Checkpoint
Quick check: DRC & Gerbers
5/8
Confirm a clean DRC, export the Gerbers, and open them in a viewer before you order: the fab builds exactly what's in those files, not what's in your design tool.
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