KiCanvas Helps Teach And Share KiCad Projects In Browsers
KiCad is undeniably the hacker favourite when it comes to PCB design, and we’ve built a large amount of infrastructure around it – plugins, integrations, exporters, viewers, and much more. Now, Stargirl Flower] is working on what we could call a web viewer for KiCad files – though calling the KiCanvas project a “KiCad viewer” would be an understatement, given everything it aims to let you do. It will help you do exciting things like copy-pasting circuits between KiCad and browser windows, embed circuits into your blog and show component properties/part numbers interactively, and of course, it will work as a standalone online viewer for KiCad files!
Of course, the “board viewer” part of the project is exceptionally handy alone, and will let you quickly show your PCB designs to others without having KiCad installed. When it comes to schematics and PCB embed features, we can already see examples of KiCanvas in action, too – with exploreable circuits in the extensive writeup about a RP2040-based LumenPnP control board, and a PCB view in an assembly guide for a precision adder. Quite a few basic goals are already achieved and the project aims to become open-source in February, but there’s plenty to work on – mobile browser support, blog integrations, assembly helper features, and of course, an inevitable pile of testing and polish – for these, you can sponsor Stargirl on GitHub, for perks like early access to the project.
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