KiCad is an open source software suite for electronic design automation (EDA) made for designing schematics of electronic circuits and printed circuit boards (PCB). KiCad is developed by the KiCad Developers Team, and features an integrated environment with schematic capture, bill of materials list, PCB layout and much more.
Compared to the other free software alternatives, KiCad solves all stages with the same interface: Schematic Capture, PCB layout, Gerber generation/visualization and library editing.
KiCad software is organized of five main software tools:
- kicad - the project manager.
- eeschema - the schematic capture editor.
- cvpcb - the footprint selector for components used in the circuit design.
- pcbnew - the PCB layout program. It also has 3D View.
- gerbview - the Gerber (photoplotter documents) viewer.
