Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Kicad:GPL PCB Suite


Kicad is an open source (GPL) software for the creation of electronic schematic diagrams and printed circuit board artwork.

Designed and written by Jean-Pierre Charras, a researcher at LIS (Laboratoire des Images et des Signaux) and a teacher in IUT de Saint Martin d'Hères.(France), in the field of electrical engineering and image processing.
Kicad is a set of four softwares and a project manager:

  • Eeschema :Schematic entry.
  • Pcbnew :Board editor.
  • Gerbview :GERBER viewer (photoplotter documents).
  • Cvpcb :footprint selector for components used in the circuit design.
  • Kicad: project manager.

With the project manager, Kicad, you can choose or create a project and launch Eeschema, Pcbnew, etc. This electronic workbench is free of charges and is open source (GPL). It is useful for everybody working in electronic design (schematic diagrams and Printed Board up to 16 layers).

This software (using WXWIDGETS) is MULTI-PLATFORM. It is running under LINUX and Windows (XP or 2000), for which updates are regularly provided. Currently, the precompiled version of Linux has been tested using Mandrake 9.2 or 10.0 (works with 10.1).
Sometime the softwares are also been tested under other O.S., especially FreeBSD and Solaris.

(Source: http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/)

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