Rearrange the parts on a PCB
Four ways to move components around an EAGLE or KiCad board. Upload a file, see where the parts will land, then download the edited board.
Grid
Lay a designator group out on a regular grid, ordered by number. Snake alternate lines to keep a serial LED chain short.
Replicate
Copy a layout you are happy with onto another board, matching parts by designator. The two boards do not have to be the same format.
Image map
Sample a picture into a grid of LED positions, then place the parts on them. Preview the sampling before you commit.
Scale
Resize board artwork, copper and part positions by a factor, leaving footprint libraries alone.
How the two formats fit together
Both formats are parsed into one internal model — millimetres, y pointing up, rotation counter-clockwise — so every method works the same whichever file you feed it. On the way out, only the parts that moved are rewritten. Nets, traces, zones, libraries and design rules are copied through byte for byte, including tokens from file format revisions this app has never seen.
Replicate reads across formats: a source board and a target board can be one of each, so an EAGLE layout can drive a KiCad respin. A board you edit is always written back in its own format — this is not a format converter, and converting a board between EAGLE and KiCad means remapping footprint libraries, which is a job for KiCad’s own importer.
- .brd
- EAGLE 6 and later. Smashed silkscreen text is carried rigidly with its part, so labels keep the placement you gave them.
- .kicad_pcb
- KiCad 5 through 9, covering both the older
fp_textand newerpropertyways of storing a reference.