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CERN BE-CO-HT Contribution to KiCad

28 September 2023

Announcement Evolution of CERN’s support to KiCad:

**We now believe that KiCad is at a level of features and quality which makes it suitable for many of the PCB designs at CERN.**
The natural way for us to keep supporting it is, as for other EDA/CAD tools, to pay a commercial company to support CERN users through a dedicated group in CERN’s IT Department. As of today, we will close our donations site.

With this announcement from the project leader Javier Serrano, the "CERN BE-CO-HT Contribution to KiCad" project has ended.
The contents of this page below will not be updated anymore.

Introduction

This ohwr.org project has been set up to facilitate the contribution of CERN to the KiCad Printed Circuit Board design tool development.
KiCad is a Free/Libre Open Source Software Tool which runs on GNU/Linux, Windows and Apple OS X. It is licensed under the GPL license.
The objective of this project is to help enhance KiCad in such a way that it becomes an efficient tool for PCB design which people can use to share their design information without compromising productivity. We do this in close collaboration with the main KiCad developers.

We think that KiCad can do to PCB design what the gcc compiler did to software: ensure there are no artificial barriers to sharing so that design and development knowledge can flow more freely.

This contribution is part of our efforts in Open Source Hardware. We describe our planned tasks and their progress using a list of work packages.
Contributions to KiCad will happen through the KiCad developers mailing list, in the standard ways defined by the main KiCad developers.


KiCad PCB layout snapshot*

Detailed project information

Donations

Contacts

Status

Date Event
11-04-2013 Project announced in the KiCad developers mailing list.
11-04-2013 Maciej Sumiński submits a preliminary version of the View component to the KiCad developers list.
09-07-2013 Maciej Sumiński submits a second release of the View component for testing purposes.
02-08-2013 Tomasz Włostowski submits the Tool Framework technical description.
28-08-2013 The View component is available to run & build on the 3 major platforms (Linux, Windows & Mac OS X).
19-09-2013 Tomasz Włostowski publishes source code of the first version of the Push&Shove router.
30-10-2013 The CERN testing branch (Graphics Abstraction Layer, Tool Framework and Push&Shove router)
is merged to the KiCad master branch.
25-11-2013 Ratsnest for the Graphics Abstraction Layer is released for testing.
19-12-2013 The Selection Tool improvements, part 1.
07-02-2014 The Selection Tool improvements, part 2.
08-03-2014 The branch containing drawing tools for the GAL is released for testing.
14-05-2014 Tomasz Włostowski releases a new version of the Interactive Push and Shove router.
It is already merged in the official product branch.
26-06-2014 Module editor upgrade is released for testing.
18-09-2014 Tomasz Włostowski starts working on the Push and Shove router improvements:
track length tuning tool & differential pair router.
09-03-2015 Tomasz Włostowski published Kicad - Differential pair routing and trace length matching.
12-09-2015 As a part of preparations for stable release, RC1 version was published.
08-11-2015 RC2 version is available for testing.
29-11-2015 KiCad 4.0.0 stable is released.
28-02-2016 KiCad 4.0.2 stable is released.
14-04-2016 OpenGL canvas renders text using bitmap fonts.
21-07-2016 KiCad integrates a circuit simulator interface based on ngspice.
29-10-2016 KiCad hackathon during the first e-HAL event in Sao Paulo, Brazil [contents in Portuguese].
24-03-2017 Modified the zone classes to take advantage of a new improved geometry library.
28-03-2017 First meeting with CERN design office about pilot test.
16-06-2017 Work on Eagle schematic import work package started, funded by CERN & Society donations.
23-06-2017 New "connectivity algorithm" by Tomasz Włostowski is merged to the master branch.
20-10-2017 Eagle schematic import package merged to the master branch.
30-10-2017 Work on bus connections upgrade started, funded by CERN & Society donations.
14-11-2017 Symbol Library Editor refactored, test version released.
15-03-2018 Preparations for the long-awaited v5 release: bug fixing and documentation updates.
22-07-2018 KiCad 5.0.0 released: KiCad 5 – A New Generation.
25-09-2019 Several workpackages to improve KiCad sponsored by donations to CERN & Society.
01-10-2021 In 24 months 19 Work Packages sponsored by the CERN & Society Foundation contribute to the KiCad 6.0 release.
28-09-2023 Announcement Evolution of CERN’s support to KiCad:
*We now believe that KiCad is at a level of features and quality which makes it suitable for many of the PCB designs at CERN.
The natural way for us to keep supporting it is, as for other EDA/CAD tools, to pay a commercial company to support
CERN users through a dedicated group in CERN’s IT Department. As of today, we will close our donations site.*
Special thanks to all our donors, who have enabled us to contribute many important features through the years,
and to the CERN & Society Foundation for their continuous support in this endeavour.

28 September 2023

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