FreePCB is a printed circuit board

Printed circuit board

A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...

 design program for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. It allows for up to 16 copper layers, both metric

Metric system

The metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement. France was first to adopt a metric system, in 1799, and a metric system is now the official system of measurement, used in almost every country in the world...

 and English

United States customary units

United States customary units are a system of measurements commonly used in the United States. Many U.S. units are virtually identical to their imperial counterparts, but the U.S. customary system developed from English units used in the British Empire before the system of imperial units was...

 units, and export of designs in RS-274X Gerber

Gerber File

The Gerber format is a file format used by printed circuit board industry software to describe the images of a printed circuit board . The Gerber format is the de-facto industry standard for printed circuit board image transfer.There are two versions. RS-274X is the most commonly used today...

 format. Boards can be partially or fully autorouted with the FreeRouting

FreeRouting

Free push&shove router for printed circuit board designs.Communicates with host PCB design systems via the standard Specctra DSN interface.In standard settings this software works with double-sided PCB design. For hobbyists and amateurs who mostly use only the bottom copper layer, this can be...

 autorouter by using the FpcROUTE Specctra DSN file translator.

Under other operating systems

FreePCB can run under Linux by using Wine

Wine (software)

Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...

 and on Macintosh computers using Parallels Desktop for Mac

Parallels Desktop for Mac

Parallels Desktop for Mac by Parallels, Inc., is software providing hardware virtualization for Macintosh computers with Intel processors.-Overview:Parallels, Inc...

, Virtual Box, or Wine

Wine (software)

Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...

 via MacPorts

MacPorts

MacPorts, formerly called DarwinPorts, is a package management system that simplifies the installation of software on the Mac OS X and Darwin operating systems. It is a free/open source software project to simplify installation of other free/open source software...

.

External links

• PCB Systems Design Community