Raspberry Pi supporting KiCad open source design automation software #KiCad #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi
Raspberry Pi Ltd is helping KiCad with their end-of-year funding drive by matching donations made on KiCad’s website up to $5000.
KiCad is a free, open source suite of CAD tools for schematic capture and Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design. It allows you to draw your electronic circuits in schematic form, using graphically represented components and wires, and then transfer this data into a PCB editor which is used to place the components and draw the copper tracks and vias that connect them.
In 2014, Raspberry Pi sponsored the work to add differential pair routing support to KiCad, which was something it had been lacking. Differential pairs are traces on the PCB that have a controlled geometry, and therefore impedance, and are used for high-speed signals such as HDMI and USB.
The addition of differential pair support, as well as the many other improvements to the tool since then, have meant Raspberry Pi are now able to use it for some of our product designs. The Compute Module 4 IO board was developed using KiCad, and the design database is free for anyone to download and use as a starting point for ones own CM4 projects: you can download a zip file of the database here.
Raspberry Pi 4 Support
Recently they have made a newer version of KiCad available. Typing apt install kicad on an up-to-date Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye image will install it. Changes made in the newer version 6 KiCad codebase have brought improved OpenGL hardware acceleration, and therefore much better performance on Raspberry Pi computers.
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