Summary of discussions in the foss-pcb mailing list
This is a place holder to keep track of ideas discussed in the foss-pcb mailing list, which aims at defining a roadmap to bring FOSS PCB design tools to a level of quality and features comparable with some of their non-open counterparts.
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Phase I. The Features.
Below is a list of desirable features for a FOSS PCB design tool. This is just a working document gathering information from the mailing list in an easy-to-reference manner. It is by no means cast in stone.
- Easy way to transfer schematics and PCB layout to other FOSS tools.
- IPC-356 netlist export, which is used by board fab houses to drive their flying probe electrical test equipment.
- Integrated push-and-shove router (or at least push/walkaround mode).
- Hardware-accelerated display engine.
- Support for split planes.
- Object filtering. For example, typing "obj.typeTrack && obj.layerTop" selects/masks/unmasks all tracks on the top layer.
- Property editor capable of editing groups of objects of different types (a nice tabular view).
- Assigning footprints directly on the schematic. Library browser in a docker window with footprint/symbol viewer.
- Scriptable constraint editor. There are constraint categories, like Length, Width, Clearance where the user can specify the acceptable values and also the conditions (using the scripting langugage) under which the constraint is checked.
- Common shell for schematic editor and PCB layout applications.