KiCad is an EDA software suite for the creation of professional schematics and printed circuit boards up to 16 layers. KiCad runs on Windows, Linux and Apple OS X and is released under the open-source GNU GPL v2 free of charge.
KiCad was developed by Jean-Pierre Charras, and features an integrated environment for schematic capture and PCB layout design. Tools exist within the package to create a bill of materials, artwork and Gerber files, and 3D views of the PCB and its components.
KiCad uses an integrated environment for all of the stages of the design process: Schematic Capture, PCB layout, Gerber file generation/visualization and library editing.
KiCad is cross-platform program, written with WxWidgets to run on FreeBSD, Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Many component libraries are available, and users can add custom components. The custom components can be available on a per-project basis, or installed for use in any project. There are also tools to help with importing components from other EDA applications, for instance EAGLE. Configuration files are in well documented plain text. This fact helps with interfacing to CVS's or SVN and with making automated component generation scripts.