CopperForge

PCB release & manufacturing companion for KiCad.

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What it does

Generate KiCad gerbers, view them in 2D and 3D, export BOM and centroid, run vendor DRC, and package tagged release zips — from one app, with per-project revision history.

• Release packaging. One click produces outputs/<rev>/<project>_<rev>[_<date>].zip with gerbers, drills, BOM (CSV + XLSX), centroid (CPL), and a RELEASE_NOTES.md capturing the KiCad version, host OS, and git commit at release time. PCBWay-target releases additionally bundle a fab-specs sheet (board dimensions, SMT/THT part and pad counts).
• Gerber viewers. A 2D viewer (grid, ruler, manual origin, mirror, layer presets, per-layer color) and a 3D viewer (board outline, copper, soldermask) — both running on the same parsed layer data.
• BOM & centroid. Pulled directly from .kicad_pcb via kiparse, no live IPC to KiCad required. BOM is symbol-library enriched (Manufacturer, MPN, datasheet); centroid follows the PCBWay / JLCPCB CPL convention.
• DRC with vendor presets. Pick a fab (Advanced Circuits, JLCPCB, or a Conservative default) and the trace/space and clearance rules load in one click. A custom editor handles in-house rules.
• Project database. Embedded redb tracks every imported project, BOM snapshot, and release. On-disk releases that the database loses are rediscovered and reattached on next load.
• KiCad 10 ready. Detects kicad-cli installed via PATH, Flatpak, or Snap (cached after first launch). Reads both KiCad 10's --no-protel-ext filenames and the traditional / Protel patterns.

Two distributions

CopperForge ships as a wasm browser app at copperforge.dev and as a native desktop app (Linux / macOS / Windows). Both targets share the same Rust core in crates/copperforge-core/, so gerber rendering, BOM and centroid parsing, release packaging, and PCBWay export behave identically where features overlap.

1. Browser — copperforge.dev

Click 📂 Load Example for a bundled 4-layer FPGA dev board, or upload your own CopperForge release zip. The 2D viewer, Board stats panel, and PCBWay re-export all work client-side — nothing leaves your browser.

What's in the browser today: 2D gerber viewer (grid, ruler, mirror, origin, layer presets, color picker), board stats (dimensions, component counts, SMT pads, weight estimate), BOM and centroid display, Release / Release-for-PCBWay download.

What's desktop-only: gerber generation (needs kicad-cli, native binary), direct .kicad_pcb parsing (BOM and centroid are read from the uploaded zip instead), the project database, and the 3D viewer.

2. Desktop

Full feature set: gerber generation, 2D and 3D viewers, BOM and centroid export, DRC, release packaging, project database. Prebuilt binaries, no Rust toolchain required:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf \
  https://github.com/Atlantix-EDA/CopperForge/releases/latest/download/copperforge-installer.sh | sh

x86_64 / aarch64 Linux, x86_64 / aarch64 macOS, and x86_64 Windows are published to Releases on every tagged version with SHA-256 checksums alongside.

Build from source

Requires Rust 1.88+.

git clone https://github.com/Atlantix-EDA/CopperForge.git
cd CopperForge
cargo run --release

Status

Under active development. The release workflow, 2D and 3D viewers, BOM and centroid export, PCBWay-target release, DRC, and the project database are shipping. In-progress and planned work (multi-rev diff, more vendor packaging, expanded DRC) lives in the issues.

Architecture

Native egui application sharing its core with a wasm browser build. Both targets compile from crates/copperforge-core/.

UI	egui 0.33, eframe 0.33, egui_dock 0.18
Gerber	gerber-viewer, gerber-parser, gerber-types
BOM parsing	kiparse
Storage	redb (single-file embedded KV)
Release archive	zip (deflate), rust_xlsxwriter
Browser target	wasm32 via Trunk + eframe WebRunner

Credits

• 3D viewer adapted from alumina-interface by Timothy Schmidt (MIT) — the OpenGL renderer behind CopperForge's render3d module.
• Gerber rendering builds on gerber-viewer from the MakerPnP project.

License

MIT.