**这是本文档旧的修订版！**

KiCad 是一种开源电子设计自动化 (EDA) 工具，提供几乎满足任何项目所需的功能。因其高层次的功能且无需许可费，而迅速流行起来。

  • KiCad 是一种全功能电子开发应用程序，用于电子器件设计和制造，可在 Windows、OSX 和 Linux 上自行运行。
  • 应用套件包括：原理图绘制、PCB布局布线、Gerber文件查看、3D实体模型查看等等。
  • Python 脚本支持电路板和封装库自动化。
  • 有大量符号、封装和3D模型库可供下载。
  • 应用和文档已翻译成多种语言。

KiCad (pronounced “Key-CAD”[6]) 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.

更详细的介绍可以搜索维基百科：https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KiCad，下面我通过几个截图给大家简单介绍一下：

这8个图标分别是KiCAD的8大功能，很全面、强大

KiCad系统自带的符号库

History

KiCad was created in 1992 by Jean-Pierre Charras while working at IUT de Grenoble.[7] Since then KiCad has gained a number of both volunteer and paid contributors. Notably in 2013 the CERN 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.

KiCad adopted a point release versioning scheme in December 2015 starting with KiCad 4.0.0. This was the first release featuring the more advanced tools implemented by CERN developers. CERN hopes to contribute further to the development of KiCad by hiring a developer through donations. Contributions may be made through the links on KiCad's website.

Components

The KiCad suite has five main parts:

  • KiCad – the project manager.
  • Eeschema – the schematic capture editor.
  • Pcbnew – the PCB layout program. It also has a 3D view.
  • GerbView – the Gerber viewer.
  • Bitmap2Component – tool to convert images to footprints for PCB artwork.

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 program, written in C++ with wxWidgets to run on FreeBSD, Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac 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 instance EAGLE. Configuration files are in well documented plain text, which helps with interfacing version control systems, as well as with automated component generation scripts.

Multiple languages are supported, such as English, Catalan, Czech, German, Greek, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovene, Swedish, and Chinese.

Eeschema

Eeschema has features including hierarchical schematic sheets, custom symbol creation, and an ERC (electrical rules check). Schematic symbols in Eeschema are very loosely coupled to footprints in Pcbnew to encourage reuse of footprints and symbols (e.g. a single 0805 footprint can be used for capacitors, resistors, inductors, etc.).

Pcbnew

Internally Pcbnew supports up to 32 copper layers and 32 technical layers. Dimensions are stored with nanometer precision in signed 32-bit integers making the theoretical maximal PCB dimension 231 nm, or approximately 2.14 meters.

Currently Pcbnew is being heavily refactored, including getting a new rendering engine (called the graphics abstraction layer, or GAL) with OpenGL and Cairo back ends. Pcbnew is also getting a new tool framework to more easily allow developers to add tools without having to deal with supporting multiple renderers. Due to this some tools are only available on the legacy XOR-based renderer and some are only available with the GAL renderers.

KiCad has a built-in autorouter for basic, single connections. Alternatively, Alfons Wirtz's open-source Java-based FreeRouting[8] can be used to externally autoroute boards. Anthony Blake's Toporouter, a topological autorouter developed in 2008 for gEDA PCB as a Google-funded open source project mentored by DJ Delorie,[9] has been adapted for use with KiCad as well.

A DRC (design rules check) is available to check for common logical errors.

The 3D PCB viewing function is based on VRML models, and the board model can be exported for CAD integration.

Some recent additions follow.

An interactive router, which features the ability to walk around existing traces in the way or shove existing traces into a different position while maintaining their connectivity.

High-speed PCB routing tools such as track-length matching and differential pair support.

Python scripting support.

Community

KiCad's popularity is fueled by its GerbView component[citation needed], used as Gerber viewer by users of other EDA software that does not support this feature such as CircuitMaker.

Olimex has announced that they have switched from EAGLE to KiCad as their primary EDA tool.

很多器件的库文件（原理图符号、封装、3D模型）都可以从UltraLibrarian网站上找到并可以下载，我今天设计中用到的所有器件都在这个网站上，没有自己创建一个元器件的库，省去了自己创建库的时间，并保证了正确性。

这是我从UltraLibrarian上下载的Lattice的FPGA（XO2-1200系列）的封装库及3D模型库，很强大、很方便吧？