HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

KiCad ( ) is a
free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...
suite for
electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work togethe ...
(EDA). It facilitates the design and simulation of electronic hardware. It features an integrated environment for
schematic capture Schematic capture or schematic entry is a step in the design cycle of electronic design automation (EDA) at which the electronic diagram, or electronic schematic of the designed electronic circuit is created by a designer. This is done interact ...
, PCB layout, manufacturing file viewing, SPICE simulation, and engineering calculation. Tools exist within the package to create
bill of materials A bill of materials or product structure (sometimes bill of material, BOM or associated list) is a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts, and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end ...
, artwork, Gerber files, and 3D models of the PCB and its components.


History


Early history

KiCad was created in 1992 by Jean-Pierre Charras while working at IUT de Grenoble. The name came from the first letters in the name of a company of Jean-Pierre's friend in combination with the term
CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...
. KiCad originally was a collection of electronics programs intended to be used in conjunction with each other. The main tools were EESchema, PCBnew, a gerber viewer, and calculator.


2010s to present

With the price of professionally made printed circuit boards rapidly dropping, hobbyists electronic design became much more popular. As a result, KiCad started gaining significant traction and a larger developer base. In 2013 the
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
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. 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. 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. A major milestone was hit in December 2015 starting with KiCad 4.0.0, the first KiCad release adopting a point release versioning scheme. This was also the first release featuring the more advanced tools implemented by CERN developers. KiCad joined the Linux Foundation in November 2019. Additionally two lead developers formed a services corporation in 2019 to help provide additional paid development support for KiCad.


Features

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 a
cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform softwar ...
program, written in C++ with wxWidgets to run on
FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular o ...
,
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whic ...
,
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, W ...
and . 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 instance
EAGLE Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, jus ...
. There are also third party libraries available for KiCad, including SnapEDA, and the Digi-Key KiCad Library. Configuration files are in well documented plain text, which helps with interfacing
version control systems In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...
, as well as with automated component generation
script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
s.


Languages

Multiple languages are supported, such as Bulgarian, Catalan,
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
,
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech ...
,
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People ...
,
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
, Finnish, French, German,
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese,
Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language * ...
,
Lithuanian Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other Jew ...
,
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin scree ...
, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish.


Schematic editing

The KiCad schematic editor has features including hierarchical schematic sheets, custom symbol creation, electrical rules check ( ERC) and integrated ngspice 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).


PCB editing

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 hilighting and individual layer dimming, and a highly customizable
design rule checking In electronic design automation, a design rule is a geometric constraint imposed on circuit board, semiconductor device, and integrated circuit (IC) designers to ensure their designs function properly, reliably, and can be produced with acceptab ...
(DRC). A number of external tools have been developed following the addition of python 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 on STEP and
VRML VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language, pronounced ''vermal'' or by its initials, originally—before 1995—known as the Virtual Reality Markup Language) is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional (3D) interactive vector graph ...
models, and the board model can be exported for
CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...
integration.


Community

On 12 March 2015 Olimex Ltd, a provider of development tools and embedded device programmers, announced that they have switched from
EAGLE Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, jus ...
to KiCad as their primary EDA tool.


See also

*
Comparison of EDA software This page is a comparison of electronic design automation (EDA) software which is used today to design the near totality of electronic devices. Modern electronic devices are too complex to be designed without the help of a computer. Electronic dev ...
*
List of free and open source software packages This is a list of free and open-source software packages, computer software licensed under free software licenses and open-source licenses. Software that fits the Free Software Definition may be more appropriately called free software; the GNU ...
*
List of free electronics circuit simulators List of free analog and digital electronic circuit simulators, available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and comparing against UC Berkeley SPICE. Some of the following simulators don't include a graphical visual interface, so a separate program must b ...


References


External links

*
Official documentation

Getting started in KiCad

Official KiCad libraries group
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kicad 1992 software Electronic design automation software Electronic design automation software for Linux Free electronic design automation software Free software programmed in C++ Software that uses wxWidgets