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Perfboard Studio v0.16.0
Added
- The board leaves as a STEP model, to draw its enclosure round. File ▸ Export 3D
Model (STEP)… writes the finished board as solids a mechanical CAD program can measure
and cut a box round: the board at its real size with every drilled hole and mounting bore
through it, every part as the room it takes -- the very outline and height DRC's
overhang and too-tall rules measure, a cylinder for a can, a barrel lying along its leads
for a resistor -- every lead down through its hole and a millimetre past the solder
side, and every wire along its path on the face it is laid on, as thick as the gauge the
cut list prints plus its sleeve, lifted over whatever it crosses as the 3D view lifts it.
Each part is its own named component (Board, R1, U1..., and Wires) in the colour the 3D
view gives it. Written by the application itself (ISO 10303-21, AP214), so it needs no
graphics driver and no new dependency; checked against OpenCASCADE, the kernel FreeCAD
and KiCad read STEP with. A project save writes-board.stepbeside the other outputs,
and the headless run writesboard.step. Copper and solder traces are left out, as
KiCad's own STEP export leaves copper out by default: an enclosure needs the room, not
the solder. export_step, the MCP server's 54th tool, writes the same STEP model for an agent:
asked to design the case, or only whether the board fits the one it has, it can now hand
the board to the program the case is drawn in. It takes a file path and is refused
without one, like every tool that writes, and needs neither Qt nor GL.
Windows - PerfboardStudio_..._Setup.exe. It is unsigned, so SmartScreen will
warn on first run: More info -> Run anyway. A signed build is planned.
Linux - perfboard-studio-...-x86_64.AppImage. chmod +x and run it; it needs
glibc 2.35 or newer. If it will not start, the machine has no FUSE 2: install
libfuse2, or run the file with --appimage-extract-and-run, which unpacks it
instead of mounting it.
macOS - perfboard-studio-...-arm64.dmg, Apple silicon. Drag it to Applications,
then run this before opening it:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PerfboardStudio.app
It is signed ad-hoc but not notarized, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch.
On macOS 15 and later the dialog it raises defaults to Move to Trash, which
deletes the install. Clearing the flag first avoids the dialog entirely. On an
Intel Mac, install from source.
Anywhere with Python 3.12+: pip install -U perfboard-studio, then perfboard-studio.
Same release, no installer and no SmartScreen warning; Qt and VTK are most of a
400 MB download the first time.
Checking your download - SHA256SUMS carries the SHA-256 of all three
files. sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS on Linux, shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS on
macOS, Get-FileHash <file> in PowerShell. Perfboard Studio does this for you when it
fetches an update itself: Help - Check for Updates. It proves the file
arrived intact, not who built it - that second claim needs the code signing
this project has not bought yet.
This is pre-alpha software. Nobody has yet built a real board by following a
generated guide - check every measurement against the part in your hand.