How to make your own CIRCUIT BOARD - what PROGRAM?

[Ridire Firean]

Hey Gang! I thought I'd bookmarked a link to a program for building your own circuit boards, but I can't find it.

I remember someone on one of the lightsaber forums was making their own ciruitboards and that they were made on purple substrate.

I'm pretty sure they were produced at Osh Park, but I've searched the Big 3 lightsaber forums and can't find what I'm looking for. Maybe it was on Facebook.

Anywho, are there any free programs for designing your own circuit boards?

 

[neophyl]

Probably the best free one at the moment (also open source) is KiCad KiCad EDA
None of them are simple to use and ALL have a learning curve. Some steeper than others.

The end result of whatever software you use to design with though are usually Gerber files. These are what you send to a board house to get produced.

 

[Ridire Firean]

Thanks neophyl ! I hope it won't be too difficult to learn how to design a 2-layer circuit board. I basically need a switch, and button holder.

I don't know much about Gerber Files, but I see they're vector based. With any luck I can use the layouts I created in Affinity Designer 2 as a blueprint for creating the new files in KiCad.