That’s why this software is so essential for solar designers, planners, or sales consultants in order to design accurate proposals for potential customers going solar. So we’ve compiled this list of free solar panel energy software, details of their best features, and who they are suited for and to help you choose the perfect design tool for the accurate design and simulation of your projects.Īs a solar power designer, I know how important it is to make systems that are energy-efficient and cost-effective. While there are many tools available for the design and analysis of solar energy (PV) systems, most of them cost more than $500 USD just for their basic packages. IPC test point reports and all other necessary outputs for professional manufacturing can be generated as well, and all this through a succinct release process that ensures your board passes design rules checks for DFM and assembly.Our team at Engineering Passion has researched solar design software tools that are both free and open-source that can be used to design and simulate residential and commercial solar power systems. You can choose Gerber and NC Drill, or ODB++, or both.
When you’re ready to turn your virtual design into a real physical board, CircuitMaker will generate industry standard CAM outputs. You can also interactively route multi-nets or single nets, or use manual routing with auto-complete. With BGA and SMT fanout, parallel memory, hug, and via optimization, it’s easy to use Situs to get working results really fast. The Situs™ topological autorouter works in concert with your design rules to help you get the board done fast. You can create complex multi-sheet designs, use hierarchical design blocks, and generate SmartPDF™ outputs from your project. You can even route differential pairs and interactively add accordions to nets that need that extra length for signal delays.ĬircuitMaker uses the same easy-to-use schematic editor as Altium Designer. The push modes will push other traces and vias, as well as hop-over. The interactive routing modes include obstacle avoidance, hug, hug-n-push, and obstacle ignore. Routing capabilities are robust in Circuitmaker. To make it easy, we’ve partnered with select manufacturers to provide a one-click manufacturing button that can directly send your board for quoting - either bare board prototype or full PCB fabrication and assembly-at the best possible price. From there, you can download the gerbers and send them off to any PCB manufacturer. Once you’ve finished your design, release the project to the community. It will show any component clearance violations and you’ll also even know what the overlap distances are, so you can get your designs right - and to fit the box - the first time. Projects can be forked and modified at any time so you can build new designs using the community wisdom and experience without having to start from scratch.Īltium Native 3D™ technology means that when you’re in the PCB editor, just hit the 3 key and you can immediately see the PCB layout in full interactive 3D. Harness the power of teams to get projects done faster. Supported by Altium 365 platform you can create and work on projects with your team or invite other community members to work with you on the design. You can also add your own custom parts and mechanical components. Placing components in CircuitMaker designs is as easy as searching by manufacturer part number or by design parameters. Also, with no commercial clause restrictions, you are free to earn revenue with your design.ĬirucitMaker is built on a community library with hundreds of thousands of components, all backed by the comprehensive, realtime Octopart database. With CircuitMaker, you get the full power of 16 signal layers plus 16 plane layers, and no restrictions to the PCB dimensions. Typically, free EDA software comes with design restrictions that render it useless for any real project.