Frequently Asked Questions

Each of the existing open-source EDA tools has a different target audience, a different focus, and different opinions about how things should be done. It makes no sense for LibrePCB developers to work on another tool (e.g. KiCad) just to be able to implement the small subset of our ideas they agree on. It’s almost impossible (and senseless) to fundamentally change the mindset of other EDA tool developers.

In the end, it’s good for users to have multiple different EDA tools to choose from. Of course we don’t develop multiple identical tools.

From time to time, people ask why every EDA package invented its own file format instead of developing a standardized, open file format to allow data exchange between different EDA packages.

Although this sounds like a great idea, in practice it makes no sense, unfortunately. The data structure of a PCB project obviously has to reflect the feature set and concepts of the tool itself; for example, if the tool uses UUIDs for referencing objects, the file format has to reflect this. If we introduced a file format to be used by multiple EDA packages, it would mean that the general concepts of these packages must be identical as well (otherwise they wouldn’t be compatible with the file format). But it makes no sense to develop multiple identical EDA packages. The same applies to LibrePCB: we want to provide you with an EDA tool that is different (from our point of view: better) than other tools, and that’s only possible with a different file format.

Yes it is! It is working very well and can be used productively to create PCBs. However, just don’t expect advanced features yet (e.g. hierarchical sheets). Features like that will be implemented in future releases.

Check out #madewithlibrepcb to see pictures of some PCBs made with LibrePCB.

Providing high-quality libraries requires a huge amount of time until they are somewhat "complete" (that’s impossible anyway). If you didn’t find what you’re looking for, it probably doesn’t exist yet.

But there’s good news: With LibrePCB it’s very easy to create your own library elements! Just create a local library and add the elements you need.

In addition, you could ask in our forum if other users already created the library elements you need.

No! Of course you can always export traditional production data (i.e. Gerber files) and order wherever you want. Although LibrePCB Fab makes life easier, we understand that you might not be happy with the provided manufacturers or you like to have more control over the ordering process (e.g. reviewing Gerber files).

In our opinion, LibrePCB Fab is a win-win-win situation because users profit from a simple and quick order process, the LibrePCB project profits from an additional income to fund the development, and manufacturers profit from gaining more customers and publicity. Thus it is a perfect way to support the LibrePCB project.

If you still don’t like it for some reason, just don’t use it — we’re totally fine with that and we’re committed to keep the traditional production data export intact since we strongly belive in freedom. Choosing a PCB manufacturer must always be up to you.

LibrePCB is an open-source project founded and coordinated by @ubruhin. Although he’s the main developer, the project receives lots of contributions from the community — for example translations, documentation and code contributions. There is no company involved in operating the project (see also How is LibrePCB related to its sponsors?), and the project is not following any commercial interests.

LibrePCB has several commercial sponsors which support the project in different ways. Some are donating money, some are providing a particular service we need to operate the project (e.g. webhosting). In return, we list them on our website as a simple and honest form of publicity. We think this is a very fair deal since LibrePCB users profit from getting a continuously developed EDA suite free of charge(!) without any downsides at all (no advertisement in the application etc.).

Note that decision-making is not impacted by sponsors. We only decide about features from the user’s point of view, not by commercial interests of sponsors. Also we take privacy very serious — even LibrePCB Fab does not forward any data to our manufacturing partners unless you explicitly choose to forward the project to them.

Short answer: For full-time development and many other things.

Long answer: To operate the LibrePCB project, various things directly cost money. For example:

However, operating a large and complex project like LibrePCB mainly takes a lot of time. At first glance you might only see the effort spent for development of the application. But in total, there are many different tasks which need to be done:

This list is by far not complete, but hopefully you now have a rough idea about the involved effort to operate the LibrePCB project and understand that all this cannot be done anymore by a volunteer in free time. Therefore the project founder and main developer @ubruhin started to work full time on LibrePCB and thus heavily relies on donations and sponsorings to pay the rent, food etc. Any donated money thus goes to him and he’ll spend it for the mentioned usage.