XNoCAD

XNoCAD is a PCB CAD designer software, similar to KiCad, DipTrace, etc

Moved to another repo (https://github.com/xnocad/xnocad-ide)

How to install

XNoCAD is currently available for Windows only.

To see what's new, see the Releases Page

• On the releases page, for the release of your choice, download the .zip file that starts with XNoCAD.
• Extract this .zip file in a folder of your choice.
• In this folder double click on IDE.exe.
• Optionally, create a Desktop shortcut.

How to build

• Use Visual Studio 2022 Community or higher from here
• Make sure you have .NET desktop development workload installed
• Right click on the project with the name IDE and choose Build
• Or, make IDE as startup project and run (F5)

Features

• Exports Gerber and NC Drill files
• Exports BOM, Pick and place files and assembly drawings
• All export is done in one single operation which is called build
• All ERC and DRC is done in a single operation called compile
• You have a solution with different projects
• These projects are various types: Gerber (for manufacturing outputs) and Library
• These projects can depend on one another or can depend on other external libraries
• A library can depend on another library
• All symbols, footprints, components, etc have their own separate file.
• All files are source control friendly, they are XML text.
• External libraries are built and deployed in a similar way is done in software development
  • All files mentioned above are like source files
  • What gets built is like a binary file ( .dll, .exe, .bin etc)
• Manufacturing outputs work on the same concept of build
• You could have multiple schematics and multiple boards in the same project
• Boards can refer to the same schematic (if you want to have different board layers of the same circuit)
• Schematics
  • have multiple sheets
  • supports filter selection
  • can define net classes
  • can define electrical rules for ERC
  • can inspect the BOM when the circuit is designed
• Boards
  • can mask layers
  • can show single layer
  • can create layer groups, to show a specific set of layers at a time
  • can change a layer color
  • can toggle layer visibility
  • have 3D preview
    • can choose to show/hide parts
    • change solder mask color, etc
  • can define board rules for DRC
    • they work in a similar way as CSS: a rule will be overriden by the one below it
    • you can have generic rules and then refine to more specific; you can have very complex rules defined this way
    • rules are applied as filtered to items (e.g. trace width) or item pairs (electrical clearance)
  • can inspect BOM
  • can define the manufacturing outputs
    • Gerber and NC Drills
    • BOM, can specify the columns and group them
    • Assembly drawings and pick and place files
    • most of the outputs have a preview
• Footprints
  • can be defined manually or using a generator
  • have 3D preview
• What's novel to this software is that there is a model (3D) file type
• Models
  • can import other file types (.obj, .stl) like in other software
  • can define models using simple primitives (cubes, cylinders, etc)
  • can define models using generators

Milestones for version v1.0

• Panelization
• Spice sim
• Advanced routing: diff pairs
• Length matching
• Import from Eagle and KiCad
• Localization