Make MCU Board - EDA Tool - KiCAD

When we design functional MCU module, the circuit schematics is necessarily step for checking IO port.

Except OrCAD and Protel, there are some open source EDA tools.

KiCAD is an open source (GPL) software, we can use KiCAD to design circuit schematics and layout PCB, the author of KiCAD is Jean-Pierre Charras( a research of LIS,Laboratoire des Images et des Signaux, in Frence, he is a electronics and image processing teacher in IUT de Saint Martin d'Hères), he design and coding the KiCAD software.

KiCAD is a composite tools, it includes a project management and 4 specially functional software:

* Eeschema : Design circuit schematics
* Pcbnew : Design PCB
* Gerbview : GERBER viewer
* Cvpcb : For selecting electronic components, while designing circuit.
* Kicad:Project management

KiCAD can use Wings 3D to simulate 3D PCB.

KiCAD does not only run on Windows OS, it can run on Linux, too.

For Fedora Core 9:

# yum install kicad

For Ubuntu 8.04

# apt-get install kicad


The GUI of KiCAD is as following:

Kicad












eeschema












cvpcb











pcbnew












3D simulation












The functions of KiCAD is complete, try it!
If you are software developer, you can download the source code from the official site.