Released the new version of the PCB design software, LibrePCB 0.1.3

FreePCB

After several months of development the new version has just been presented Free Package for PCB Layout Automation FreePCB 0.1.3. Which is a program that is positioned as an intuitive package for the rapid development of simple motherboards, which lags far behind KiCad in functionality, but is much easier to work with.

Y unlike other tools eda, no need to worry about manually assigning the pins either from symbols to footprint blocks later in the panel editor.

About LibrePCB

The schematic editor it is very easy to use and still powerful. Thanks to the innovative library concept, you don't need to worry about choosing footprints when drawing the outline. When adding components to the schematic, most EDA tools allow you to choose them from a simple list of installed libraries (often named by the manufacturer).

LibrePCB has a fairly intuitive graphical interface In addition to its control panel, it will give us access to the projects we have in development, with an ideal management of the latest edited and the projects we use the most.

In addition, LibrePCB allows the user to incorporate any library of past projects, With which, in a simple way, the desired library to be used is simply downloaded and installed.

What's new in LibrePCB 0.1.3?

In this new version tools were added to verify compliance with design rules (DRC, Design Rule Checking), which allow to identify typical errors in the design of the plate circuit boards, such as missing connections, very narrow gaps between tracks, and excessively thin copper elements. Identified issues are displayed in the sidebar. When you click on a notification, the issue is clearly highlighted on the dashboard.

It also stands out a new interface to export bills of materials (BOM) in CSV format. The declaration contains the specification of all the elements and parts involved, as well as their required quantity for the production of the final board, in addition to arbitrary columns can be added to indicate additional attributes in the declaration.

Another novelty is the possibility to print the board and export visible layers in PDF format.

How to install LibrePCB on Linux?

The installation of this software is quite simple since in addition to offering the code for compilation, it has packages already built, one of them is from Flatpak packages, with which simply we must have the support to be able to install applications of this type in our system.

If you don't have this support added to your system, You can visit the following article in which we explain how to do it.

Now having the Flatpak support, We can install the application by opening a terminal and executing the following command:

flatpak install --user https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.librepcb.LibrePCB.flatpakref

If you already had this type of installation, you can check if there is a more current version, executing the following command in your terminal.

flatpak --user update org.librepcb.LibrePCB

And ready with it, they will already have the latest version of this free circuit editor installed, they just have to look for the launcher in their application menu to be able to run it on their system.

If they cannot find the launcher, they can open the application with the help of the following command:

flatpak run org.librepcb.LibrePCB

Another method we have to obtain this application is with the help of an AppImage, which we can download by opening a terminal and in it executing the following commands:

wget https://download.librepcb.org/releases/0.1.3/librepcb-0.1.3-linux-x86_64.AppImage -O librepcb.AppImage

Once the download is done, now we must give execution permissions to the downloaded application with the following command:

chmod +x ./librepcb.AppImage

And finally we can run this application by double clicking on the downloaded file or from the terminal we can run it with the following command:

./librepcb.AppImage

Installation on Arch Linux

For those who are Arch Linux users, they will be able to install this tool from AURTherefore, they must have an AUR assistant for their installation.

Can I recommend some in this post. Now we open a terminal and in it we execute the following command:

yay -S librepcb

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  1.   anonymous said

    Interesting, the issue is to see what component libraries it has or is compatible, because a CAE / CAD / CAM program is good for its existing component libraries.
    I have been using kicad for quite a while, which is wonderful to the extent that pcb
    they take the native layouts in kicad.

    $ eix -Ic kicad
    [I] sci-electronics / kicad (5.1.4@10/08/19): Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools
    [I] sci-electronics / kicad-i18n (5.1.4@10/08/19): Electronic Schematic and PCB design tools GUI translations.
    Found 2 matches

    Thank you very much, I'll see to install it and see what it is about.