Electronic design

VisualPlace assists in (manual or automated) PCB assembly. Component placement is extracted from files generated from the EDA suite —notably the Gerber files, the centroid file(s) and the bill-of-materials.

The application visualizes the component placement and converts the files (with corrections, where applicable) for further automated processing. Creating placement information (with semi-automatic centre-finding for the centroid markers) is also possible.

Due to a plug-in architecture, VisualPlace works with many EDA suites, and more can be added.

DrillFile: drill file creator for KiCad

KiCad is an open-source EDA-suite. This "DrillFile" utility creates either one or two drill files in Excellon format, optionally separating plated-through holes from non-plated holes. It comes as both a GUI and a console utility. Documentation and source code are included in the download.

DrillFile user interface (click on the picture to zoom in)

Nota Bene: The latest version of KiCad allows holes to be marked as "mechanical" and creates a separate "NPTH" drill file for these. Earlier versions of KiCad always stored all holes in a single drill file. The DrillFile utility allows you to select either option, for any version of KiCad.