PCB (software)

PCB is an open source software suite for electronic design automation (EDA) - for printed circuit boards (PCB) layout.

History

PCB was not the first written by Thomas Nau for an Atari ST in 1990 and ported to UNIX and X11 in 1994. Initially not intended as a professional layout system, but as a tool for people that does some home-developing of hardware.^[1][2]

Harry Eaton took over pcb development beginning with Release 1.5, although he contributed some code beginning with Release 1.4.3

Features

• Scalable fonts
• Layer groups to keep signals together
• Add on device drivers
• Gerber RS-274X and NC Drill output support
• Centroid (X-Y) data output
• PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript output
• Rats-nest generation from simple net lists
• Automatic clearance around pins that pierce a polygon
• Flags for pins and vias
• Groups of action commands can be undone by a single undo
• Simple design rule checker (DRC) - checks for minimum spacing and overlap rules
• Drawing directly on the silk layer
• Viewable solder-mask layers and editing
• Netlist window
• Netlist entry by drawing rats
• Auto router
• Snap to pins and pads
• Element files and libraries that can contain whole sub-layouts, metric grids
• Up to 16 copper layer designs by default
• Trace optimizer
• Rats nest
• Connectivity verification
• Can interoperate with free schematic capture tools such as gEDA and XCircuit
• GNU autoconf/automake based build system
• PCB is Free Software

References

External links

• pcb.gpleda.org/pcb-cvs/pcb.html