FreePCB is a
printed circuit board
A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...
design program for
Microsoft Windows, written by Allan Wright.
Functionality
The program allows for up to 16 copper layers, both
metric
Metric or metrical may refer to:
* Metric system, an internationally adopted decimal system of measurement
* An adjective indicating relation to measurement in general, or a noun describing a specific type of measurement
Mathematics
In mathem ...
and
customary units, and export of designs in
RS-274X Gerber format. Boards can be partially or fully autorouted with the
FreeRoutingautorouter
In electronic design, wire routing, commonly called simply routing, is a step in the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and integrated circuits (ICs). It builds on a preceding step, called placement, which determines the location of each ...
by using the FpcROUTE
Specctra
Specctra is a commercial PCB auto-router originally developed by John F. Cooper and David Chyan of Cooper & Chyan Technology, Inc. (CCT) in 1989. The company and product were taken over by Cadence Design Systems in May 1997. Since its integra ...
DSN design file translator.
Other operating systems
FreePCB can run under Linux by using
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are ...
and on Macintosh computers using
Parallels Desktop for Mac
Parallels Desktop for Mac is software providing hardware virtualization for Macintosh computers with Intel processors, and since version 16.5 also for Apple silicon-based Macintosh computers. It is developed by Parallels, since 2018 a subsidiary ...
,
Virtual Box, or
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are ...
via
MacPorts
MacPorts, formerly DarwinPorts, is a package manager for macOS and Darwin. It is an open-source software project that aims to simplify the installation of other open source software. It's similar in function to Fink and the BSD ports collections ...
.
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 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 be ...
References
External links
*
There is a wonderful development branch of the program on this sitePCB Systems Design Communityfpcconvert - a HPGL and G-code conversion tool for FreePCB
Windows software
Free electronic design automation software
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