Open Source PCB CAD

Community PCB Design
1

Is there a decent open source PCB CAD software? I’ve used protel before but don’t want to foot the bill for a little home project.

Thanks!

2

Eagle is good for small hobby projects (and it’s free to most extents). It’s not open source though, so if you were planning on writing your own features, you’ll have to keep looking.

3

gEDA is the only Open Souce suite I know of. PCB is the name of its PCB tool.

gEDA runs on Unix/Unix-Like (Linux) environments although you can modify the source to make it run on Windows.

4

KiCAD is another open source package, and runs under Windows. If the design uses less than 100 pins you could use the Pulsonix demo, I use Pulsonix and it is is much easier to use than Eagle or the free packages. The full version is expensive, though.

Leon

5

I just saw something float by on the Yahoo Homebrew PCB mailing list for a new open source PCB layout tool called Liquid PCB. I’ve not yet downloaded it, but it looks quite interesting (but at the same time, it is rather new and may need fiddling to get it to run)

http://www.liquidpcb.org/

I may see if I can build it on my Fedora system some time soon.

6

winston:
I just saw something float by on the Yahoo Homebrew PCB mailing list for a new open source PCB layout tool called Liquid PCB. I’ve not yet downloaded it, but it looks quite interesting (but at the same time, it is rather new and may need fiddling to get it to run)

http://www.liquidpcb.org/

I may see if I can build it on my Fedora system some time soon.

That looks very interesting. The way you can sorta just push tracks around is really neat, though I wonder how well it would work on really high density stuff. Methinks not so good - but who knows.
7

KICAD also have a 3D plot of your PCB but not exportable (it would be great if I can export it in DXF format so it would be easier to design an enclosure/chassis that conforms to the PCB)…I can’t remember all the features of both KICAD and gEDA PCB but any simple and not too complex project is doable on both…there are sample PCB designs on KICAD and I remember one of them is a not too complex PCI Card…

if you use Windows then you have to use cygwin if you want to intstall gEDA on Windows…

8

There’s another free (beer) project that does push-and-shove routing similar to how LiquidPCB works: [FreeRouting. It has its share of quirks, but I’ve been using it on simple boards off and on for a year or so and it always does a good job for me. It’s written in java, so you can try it out on the sample designs and play with hand or autorouting without installing anything. Helps to have a fast computer. It integrates with Eagle and a bunch of other programs, although it’s a bit of a pain to do the import/exporting.](http://freerouting.net/)