 | |
 KiCad PCB editor | |
| Original author(s) | Jean-Pierre Charras |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | KiCad developers[1] |
| Initial release | 1992; 33 years ago (1992)[2] |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C++[4] |
| Operating system | Linux,macOS,Windows |
| Available in | 39 languages[5] |
| Type | EDA |
| License | GPL-3.0[6] |
| Website | www |
KiCad (/ˈkiːˌkæd/KEE-kad[7]) is afree software suite forelectronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware forPCB manufacturing. It features an integrated environment forschematic capture,PCB layout, manufacturing file viewing,ngspice-providedSPICE simulation, and engineering calculation. Tools exist within the package to createbill of materials, artwork,Gerber files, and 3D models of the PCB and its components.
KiCad was created in 1992 by Jean-Pierre Charras while working atIUT de Grenoble.[8] The name came from the first letters in the name of a company of Jean-Pierre's friend in combination with the termCAD.[9] KiCad originally was a collection of electronics programs intended to be used in conjunction with each other. The main tools were EESchema, PCBnew, aGerber viewer, and a calculator.
With the price of professionally made printed circuit boards rapidly dropping, hobbyist electronic design became much more popular. As a result, KiCad started gaining significant traction and a larger developer base.
In 2013 theCERN BE-CO-HT section started contributing resources towards KiCad to help foster open hardware development by helping improve KiCad to be on par with commercial EDA tools.[10] From 2013 until approximately 2018 CERN provided two developers part time to help improve KiCad. Much of the work provided by CERN involved massive refactoring of the code base to give KiCad a better structure to grow and adapt.[11] Help is also provided by organizing donations and fundraisers to help pay for additional contract developers for KiCad, along with sponsoring KiCad's web infrastructure. Well over 1400 hours of developer time has been provided by CERN.[12]
A major milestone was hit in December 2015 starting with KiCad 4.0.0, the first KiCad release adopting apoint release versioning scheme. This was also the first release featuring the more advanced tools implemented by CERN developers.
KiCad joined theLinux Foundation in November 2019.[13]
Additionally two lead developers formed a services corporation in 2019 to help provide additional paid development support for KiCad.[14]
KiCad uses an integrated environment for all of the stages of the design process: Schematic capture, PCB layout, Gerber file generation/visualization, and library editing.
KiCad is across-platform program, written in C++ withwxWidgets to run onFreeBSD,Linux,Microsoft Windows andMac OS X. Many component libraries are available, and users can add custom components. The custom components can be available on a per-project basis or installed for use in any project. There are also tools to help with importing components from other EDA applications, for instanceEAGLE andAltium. There are also third party libraries available for KiCad, including SnapEDA,[15] and theDigi-Key KiCad Library.[16] Since KiCad V4 the board file is written asUTF-8-based human-readableS-expression. The schematics, libraries and project files were also converted to the S-expression format in KiCad V6 for easier maintenance. Configuration files are in well documented plain text as well, which helps with interfacingversion control systems, as well as with automated component generationscripts.
Multiple languages are supported, such asBulgarian,Catalan,Chinese,Czech,Dutch,English,Finnish,French,German,Greek,Hungarian,Italian,Japanese,Korean,Lithuanian,Polish,Portuguese,Russian,Slovak,Slovene,Spanish, andSwedish.
The KiCad schematic editor has features including hierarchical schematic sheets, custom symbol creation, electrical rules check (ERC) and integratedngspice circuit simulation. Schematic symbols are very loosely coupled to circuit board footprints to encourage reuse of footprints and symbols (e.g. a single 0805 footprint can be used for capacitors, resistors, inductors, etc).
Internally KiCad's PCB editor supports up to 32 copper layers and 32 technical layers. Dimensions are stored with nanometer precision in signed 32-bit integers making the theoretical maximum PCB dimension 231 nm, or approximately 2.14 meters.
There are a variety of tools available while doing layout through both built in functions and external plugins. Some advanced built in functionality includes a push and shove router,differential and single ended trace length tuning, net highlighting and individual layer dimming, and a highly customizabledesign rule checking (DRC).
A number of external tools have been developed following the addition ofPython scripting integration in to KiCad. A number of plugins exist such as a high quality silkscreen label generators,BOM and assembly viewers, panelization plugins, along with many other plugins.
A 3D PCB viewing function is based onSTEP andVRML models, and the board model can be exported forCAD integration.
Alternatively, Alfons Wirtz's open-sourceJava-based FreeRouting[17] can be used to externally autoroute boards. Anthony Blake'sToporouter, atopological autorouter developed in 2008 forgEDAPCB as a Google-funded open source project mentored byDJ Delorie,[18] has been adapted for use with KiCad as well.
On 12 March 2015 Olimex Ltd,[19] a provider of development tools and embedded device programmers, announced that they have switched fromEAGLE to KiCad as their primary EDA tool.[20]
[…] JP Charras said me that the first drafts were made in 1992 for a DOS version, but not diffused […]
