Content for KiCad

KiCad

KiCad (pronounced "Key-CAD") is a free software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It facilitates the design of schematics for electronic circuits and their conversion to PCB designs. KiCad was originally developed by Jean-Pierre Charras. It features an integrated environment for schematic capture and PCB layout design. Tools exist within the package to create a bill of materials, artwork, Gerber files, and 3D views of the PCB and its components.

KiCad Version 8.0.0 Released

“The KiCad project is proud to announce the release of version 8.0.0. Despite coming only a year after KiCad 7 was released, version 8 is packed with new features, improvements, and hundreds of bug fixes. We hope you …

KiCad Version 7.0.0 Released

“The KiCad project is proud to announce the release of version 7.0.0. KiCad 7 is a significant upgrade from KiCad 6, and comes with a number of exciting new features as well as improvements to existing features. The …

Melting KiCad

“KiCad has improved a lot, but one of the features it’s really lacking is the ability to do smooth, rounded traces with teardrops (fillets on pads and vias). A lot of early, hand drawn PCBs had this look, where …

KiCad 6.0.0 Release

“The KiCad project is proud to announce the release of version 6.0.0. This is the first major version release of KiCad since 5.0.0 was released in July of 2018. KiCad binaries are available for download for …

Kicad Mesh Plugin

“Tamper Detection Meshes Cryptography is at the foundation of our modern, networked world. From email to card payment infrastructure in brick and mortar stores, cryptographic keys secure almost every part of our digital lives againts cybercriminals or curious surveillance capitalists …

KiCad 5.1.6 Release

“The KiCad project is proud to announce the latest series 5 stable release. The 5.1.6 stable version contains critical bug fixes and other minor improvements since the 5.1.5 release. It also includes improved footprint, symbol, and …

3D modeling off-the-shelf PCBs in KiCAD and designing enclosures for them

“Usually when ordering ready PCB modules, we rarely want to use them as-is. That’s why we design enclosures for them (or better yet, find it designed by someone else and just print - but I’m not going to cover …

Bit Preserve

“Project for capturing vintage, classic, aka old computer schematics in KiCad. Recreating classic computer schematics. Let’s convert all those random scanned PDFs into a modern, editiable and re-usable format. Most of the directories are empty. They represent the structure …

PCB Business Card

“I had a very simple business card for years, but I was just plain tired of it. It was too bland and looked like all of the other business cards that I had amassed over the years. I was catching …

KiCad 5 - A New Generation

“Almost a year after the release of KiCad 4.0.7, the KiCad development team is proud to present a new and improved KiCad 5.0 release! The stable release version 5.0.0 is made from the stable 5 …

Maker’s Rule-The Feature Packed PCB Multi-Tool

“It has been a while since i posted my Tinker Rule which i made during college days. I received a few requests for the ready to etch pdf which helped me gauge if this seemed to be useful to people …

Mini-PCIe microcontroller and make your board too

“All VIA’s current ARM boards (VAB-600, 820, 1000) have an online mini-PCIe connector, and I’ve been planning to do something interesting with that for a long time (see this intro post from more than a year ago …

KiCad 4.0.0 Is Out!

“We’ve just released the long-awaited KiCad stable release, version 4.0.0! The announcement can be read on the developer’s mailing list archive. KiCad binaries will be available for download for Windows, OSX and Linux in the near …