We translate the electronic circuit into a printed circuit board. An overview of free PCB design systems. Description of DipTrace program
If you need a free drawing program printed circuit boards for your project, thanks to this list you will be able to find the solution you need.
Ten PCB design programs are freely available to help you significantly reduce wiring time and ease the process.
ZenitPCB is a great tool for creating professional PCBs. It is a flexible and easy-to-use CAD program that will enable you to complete your projects in a short time. With it, you can create a project, starting from both circuitry and directly from the board layout.
This is a free open source program source code for Microsoft Windows... It has been designed to be easy to learn and easy to use, while maintaining a professional level of performance. Some of its features include the ability to create boards with the number of layers from 1 to 16, support for board sizes up to 60x60 inches, import and export of PADS-PCB netlists, and much more.
This program is designed primarily for drawing electrical circuits. It comes bundled with component libraries to make it easy to work with. In addition to being able to print your project, you can use TinyCAD to publish your diagrams by copying and pasting to word document or saving as bitmap PNG.
Osmond PCB is a flexible PCB design tool. It works on Macintosh computers. Its varied features include: virtually unlimited board sizes, a large number of layers, a large number of components, support for components for both through and surface mounting.
BSch3V is simple program to work with electrical circuits... The name "BSch" is an abbreviation for "Basic Schematic". It has only basic functions, which in turn simplifies the work.
This program is quite simple to learn and work. PCB layout is easy even for inexperienced users.
It is open source software for creating electronic circuits and printed circuit boards. It is useful for everyone involved in full cycle project development.
It works under Linux and has tools for schematic design, simulation and prototyping. The gEDA project currently offers a serious set of free software for electronics design.
Fritzing software is an interesting open source project for developers, researchers and radio amateurs who prefer a creative approach to PCB design. Fritzing can help you learn more about electronic circuits, document designs, and even prepare a product for production.
DesignSpark PCB is by far the most affordable software in the world of electronics development. This program is easy to learn and use. It is designed to greatly shorten the product development process. At the heart of this unique approach is a powerful software engine that allows you to work with electrical circuits, design PCBs, and perform PCB routing.
Free full-featured cloud-based PCB design system that does not require installation on local computer (Picture 1). Despite the fact that EasyEDA is a cloud service and a new developing project, it boasts functionality, reliability, stability and speed of work, a simple and intuitive interface, a rich set of component libraries with an automatic update function, and the ability to import projects from other design systems. The system includes a schematic editor, a mixed signal simulator using SPICE models and schematics, a multilayer PCB editor with an autorouter and a PCB preparation system. And most importantly, the EasyEDA system has Russian user interface.
In addition, the EasyEDA system, which has the functionality of professional PCB design tools, adds the advantages typical for cloud services: automatic update element libraries (for the schematic editor, SPICE simulator and PCB editor), the ability to share your designs and libraries, access to a huge collection of professional Open Source modules, operational technical support and communication with system developers.
EasyEDA can be used from any browser. The presence of a textbook, a manual for the SPICE simulator, a huge number of examples of professional projects, an intuitive user interface ensure the ease of mastering the system.
The main advantages of EasyEDA:
- free, cross-platform, no-install, cloud-based toolkit that combines powerful circuit editing, digital-to-analog circuit simulation and PCB design in a web browser for electronics engineers, educators, students, and hobbyists.
- all the benefits cloud service: work from a browser in any operating room linux system, Mac, Windows, Android;
- fast drawing in the browser of electronic circuits using the available libraries, efficient automatic updating;
- libraries from SeedStudio, SparkFun, Adafruit, KiCad, DangerousPrototype;
- manager of work with libraries of elements, quick search for elements in system and user libraries;
- verification of analog, digital and mixed circuits using SPICE models and subcircuits;
- work on multilayer boards with thousands of contact pads;
- the ability to import projects from Eagle, Altium, Kicad and LTspice;
- customizability general access and teamwork on projects;
- access to Open Source modules developed by thousands of electronic engineers;
- the ability to share your developments using public or private access settings.
TinyCAD
The free design system for professional electronic circuits is positioned as an ordinary application for drawing and editing two-dimensional hierarchical electronic circuits of various degrees of complexity (Figure 3). A fairly extensive library of components, support for export and import of projects, joint work with the FreePCB PCB design environment and LTspice simulator make TinyCAD a powerful enough free end-to-end design system to compete with commercial products.
ZenitPCB
Simple and flexible CAD, which is a semi-professional software for drawing electrical circuits and tracing printed circuit boards (Figure 4). The application consists of four independent modules: ZenitCapture (electrical diagram editor), ZenitParts (component editor), ZenitPCB GerberView (Gerber file viewer) and ZenitPCB itself (printed circuit board editor). The sequence of operations in the ZenitPCB program is as follows: placing components in the ZenitCapture module, setting connections between them, creating a list of connections, developing a board outline in the ZenitPCB module, loading the list of connections into the ZenitPCB module, routing operations. Supports import / export of DXF-files, export of IDF (3D) files, printout of work results in each module of the application. However, the main disadvantage of ZenitPCB is the lack of such useful functionsas automatic routing and automatic placement of component parts.
FreePCB
Free open source program for editing printed circuit boards (Figure 5). When creating the program, the task was set to make it as simple as possible to study and use, but capable of ensuring the professional quality of development. Itself is designed only for manual routing of boards, however, it allows you to use the FreeRouting autorouter available on the network.
Here are some of the features of the program:
- operating environment - Microsoft Windows;
- support from 1 to 16 layers;
- maximum size printed circuit board 1524 × 1524 mm;
- most functions accept both imperial and metric units (mils or mm);
- case libraries courtesy of Design International, PCB Matrix and IPC;
- filling polygons;
- editor and wizard for creating and modifying component footprints;
- import of netlist from LTspice simulator;
- import / export of net lists to PADS-PCB;
- export of topology files to extended Gerber format (RS274X) and drilling files to Excellon format;
- verification of compliance with design standards;
- autosave.
KiCad
Free cross-platform system with Russian interface for creating electrical circuits and printed circuit boards. KiCad includes a suite of programs for automating the design of electronic devices (Electronic Design Automation - EDA). The work in the system is carried out completely through graphical interface... You drag in work area necessary elements, add links between them, make signatures to them. Distinctive feature is support for 3D visualization of the PCB project (Figure 6).
KiCad consists of the following components: Eeschema - electrical schematic editor; Pcbnew - editor of printed circuit boards (also includes a viewer for 3D images of printed circuit boards); Gerbview - photomask viewer; Cvpcb - selection of footprints for components used in the diagram; Kicad is a project manager.
(DSPCB) from RS Components (RS) is perhaps the world's most affordable electronic design software (Figure 7). It is easy to learn and easy to use. It is specially designed for non-CAD professionals to shorten the time between the idea of \u200b\u200ba device and the start of its production, to speed up the time to market of the finished product. allows you to draw electrical diagrams, develop the design of a printed circuit board and its routing, and also offers ready-made models electronic componentsprovided by RS Components.
Moreover, this program performs automatic placement of components and autorouting of the links of the printed design. The results obtained are corrected manually. It is important that the program is free of practical limitations on board size, component pin count, board layers, and output file formats. Therefore, it can be used not only for drawing circuits and PCB, but also for creating files for production.
Recently, several cloud-based PCB design systems have appeared, but some of them are limited in functionality and are not suitable even for radio amateurs, let alone professionals. The rest of the programs are comparable to desktop applications, but have become paid. For example, free online system EasyEDA can become a worthy competitor to the product from Aspen Labs, full version which became paid.
The material was written for the RCOnline.ru website in 2007.
Some time ago, I stumbled across two very interesting programs on the Internet for drawing circuit diagrams and PCB layout. Both programs have been translated from German into Russian by V. Shcherbakov, which allows even inexperienced modellers and novice electronics engineers to use them. The programs are not related to each other, and do not have such broad capabilities as the well-known OrCad, PCad and Accel-EDA packages and others, however, with their help, you can draw a rather complex circuit and trace a double-sided printed circuit board. Both programs have ready-made element libraries, in addition, in each of them you can easily create your own element, both schematic and PCB.
Since both of these programs were announced as Freeware, I think that I will not violate anyone's copyright by publishing them on this site.
The first program, Splan, is a "drawing" of schematic diagrams. contains nine files of the "body" of the program and the bibo folder containing ready-made libraries of schematic elements. It should be noted that the set of ready-made elements, especially digital and analog microcircuits, is not very large, but the user can draw the necessary elements using the built-in editor. The program supports continuous numbering of the same type of parts.
Of course, the program allows you to draw basic geometric figures, lines, connection points, make text inserts and inscriptions, as well as draw up a finished diagram in accordance with the requirements for technical drawings.
The program does not require installation, per se. You just need to unpack the archive file into the desired folder and the program is ready to go. The program is designed to work under Windows any versions (Win- *, NT, 2000, XP), and occupies a little more than one megabyte on the disk.
I draw your attention that all my further developments and publications with schematic diagrams and drawings of printed circuit boards I will do using these two programs!
P.S. Life does not stand still - over the past 7 years, both programs have been significantly modified by the developers. Currently relevant and. The programs have significantly greater capabilities than their predecessors, so, for example, Sprint-Layout, is able to route four-layer printed circuit boards, and has much more convenient service capabilities, and sPlan is presented in a portable version that does not require installation on hDD... Both new versions of the programs are available in the attached archives.
Please note that the output file formats created in earlier versions of programs are read by older versions, while they, as a rule, are modified to match the format of the older version. But, unfortunately, younger versions of programs do not understand files created in older versions of sPlan and Sprint-Layout.
If you need a free PCB drawing program for your project, this list will help you find the right solution for you.
Ten PCB design programs are freely available to help you significantly reduce wiring time and ease the process.
ZenitPCB is a great tool for creating professional PCBs. It is a flexible and easy-to-use CAD program that will enable you to complete your projects in a short time. With it, you can create a project, starting from both circuitry and directly from the board layout.
It is free and open source software for Microsoft Windows. It has been designed to be easy to learn and easy to use, while maintaining a professional level of performance. Some of its features include the ability to create boards with the number of layers from 1 to 16, support for board sizes up to 60x60 inches, import and export of PADS-PCB netlists, and much more.
This program is designed primarily for drawing electrical circuits. It comes bundled with component libraries to make it easy to work with. In addition to being able to print your project, you can use TinyCAD to publish your diagrams by copying and pasting into a Word document or saving as a PNG bitmap.
Osmond PCB is a flexible PCB design tool. It works on Macintosh computers. Its varied features include: virtually unlimited board sizes, large number of layers, large number of components, support for both through and surface mount components.
BSch3V is a simple program for working with electrical circuits. The name "BSch" is an abbreviation for "Basic Schematic". It has only basic functions, which in turn simplifies the work.
This program is quite simple to learn and work. PCB layout is easy even for inexperienced users.
It is open source software for creating electronic circuits and printed circuit boards. It is useful for anyone involved in the full cycle of project development.
It works under Linux and has tools for schematic design, simulation and prototyping. The gEDA project currently offers a serious set of free electronics design software.
Fritzing software is an interesting open source project for developers, researchers and radio amateurs who prefer a creative approach to PCB design. Fritzing can help you learn more about electronic circuits, document designs, and even prepare a product for production.
DesignSpark PCB is arguably the most affordable software in the electronics design world today. This program is easy to learn and use. It is designed to greatly shorten the product development process. At the heart of this unique approach is a powerful software engine that allows you to work with electrical circuits, design PCBs, and perform PCB routing.
