Open a PCB design without installing the CAD tool

What you are usually looking for

Before picking a tool, name the question. A purchaser needs the bill of materials with manufacturer part numbers. A firmware engineer needs the schematic to find which pin drives what. A manufacturer needs the layer stack, the outline and the fabrication files. A reviewer needs all of it, plus the ability to follow a net from the schematic into the copper. A static picture answers the first question badly and the last one not at all.

A PDF or a screenshot

If the sender exported one, it opens anywhere and shows the sheets as drawn. It does not let you search for a reference, highlight a net, sort the BOM, hide a layer, or check whether what you are reading is the current revision. It is the right answer for a quick look and the wrong one for a review.

A browser viewer for the file

Some viewers open design files in the browser directly. KiCanvas renders KiCad files, including current ones. Altium's free 365 Viewer opens Altium, EAGLE, CircuitStudio and older-format KiCad files that you drag in, plus Gerbers, for the browser session or on a 48-hour link, and a free Altium account keeps an upload permanently. Both are good at what they cover. What neither gives you is the project as a whole: the other files in the folder, which revision you are reading, and a history to compare it against.

A BoardRepo page

When a board is on BoardRepo, the link opens the whole project in the browser with no account and no install: the schematic sheets, with components you can click to jump to the same part on the PCB, the PCB by layer, an interactive 3D model, the bill of materials as a table you can filter by reference, value or part number, sort, and download as CSV, and the file tree with every original file. Generated Gerbers and drill files are there for KiCad boards; for Altium boards, the fabrication files are whatever the author included. Version history sits behind the same link, so you can see which revision you are reading and open an older one.

If you have the zip rather than a link, you can upload it yourself: sign in, upload the project folder as a zip, and keep it as an unlisted link that only you and the people you send it to can open. That is often the fastest way to look at a design you were sent, and it keeps the original bytes downloadable for whenever you do install the tool.

On a public board, or on your own board once you opt it in, a signed-in reader can also ask questions about the design in plain language with BoardRepo Ask, or connect their own AI assistant to read it. Neither replaces opening the design in its tool before you order; both are faster than reading a PDF.

Reading a converted Altium design

An Altium project is converted before it is drawn. The schematic and layout you see are faithful for reading, following nets and counting parts, but a conversion is not the design itself: for a decision that costs money, open the original in Altium Designer, which is kept unchanged beside the converted copy for exactly that purpose.

Browse public boards to see what a page looks like, or upload a project you were sent.