KiCad → 3D, no upload

Drop a board.
Get the render.

Paste a GitHub repo, or drop a project zip or bare .kicad_pcb. You get top, bottom, and angled 3D PNGs with silkscreen. Everything renders in this tab.

Public repos only. The board is fetched straight from GitHub by your browser, nothing goes through a server.

Drop a .zip or .kicad_pcb here

Zips are searched for the project's board. Files stay in your browser.

How it works

A software renderer, not a screenshot.

  1. Parse. The .kicad_pcb S-expression file is read directly: outline, copper, mask openings, silkscreen, drills, footprints.
  2. Composite. Each side becomes a texture: mask over copper, exposed pads in the board's finish, silkscreen on top, holes cut through.
  3. Extrude. The outline is triangulated into a slab; footprints become boxes sized from their fab outline and IPC-7351 names.
  4. Rasterize. A z-buffer renderer with supersampling draws each view to PNG. No WebGL, so the same code runs in the CLI.

Copy me for your agent

Hand this to Claude, Codex, or Cursor.

Paste the block into your coding agent. It downloads the right release binary for the machine it is on and renders your KiCad project. Also served as plain text at /agent.md. 

# PCB23D for agents — render a KiCad board to 3D PNGs

You are rendering a KiCad PCB to PNG images (top, bottom, angled 3D). Use the `pcb23d`
single-binary CLI. It has no dependencies and runs offline.

## 1. Download the binary for this machine

Releases: https://github.com/TensorFleet/pcb23d/releases/latest
Asset names: pcb23d-linux-x64, pcb23d-linux-arm64, pcb23d-darwin-x64, pcb23d-darwin-arm64, pcb23d-windows-x64.exe

Linux/macOS:

    os=$(uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')          # linux | darwin
    arch=$(uname -m); case "$arch" in x86_64) arch=x64;; aarch64|arm64) arch=arm64;; esac
    curl -fsSL -o pcb23d "https://github.com/TensorFleet/pcb23d/releases/latest/download/pcb23d-${os}-${arch}"
    chmod +x pcb23d
    ./pcb23d --version

Windows (PowerShell):

    Invoke-WebRequest https://github.com/TensorFleet/pcb23d/releases/latest/download/pcb23d-windows-x64.exe -OutFile pcb23d.exe
    .\pcb23d.exe --version

Alternative without a binary (needs Bun or Node 18+): `bunx pcb23d --help` or `npx pcb23d --help`
are not available; instead `bun add pcb23d` and call `renderPcb()` from TypeScript.

## 2. Pass in the KiCad project

Input is either a `.kicad_pcb` file or a `.zip` of the whole KiCad project. Zips are searched
for the board; the `.kicad_pro`'s sibling `.kicad_pcb` wins, backups are ignored.

    ./pcb23d path/to/project.zip --out renders --json
    ./pcb23d path/to/board.kicad_pcb --out renders --views top,bottom,angle
    ./pcb23d https://github.com/owner/repo --out renders --json      # public GitHub repo, tree URL, or owner/repo

Outputs land in `--out` as `<input-stem>-<view>.png` (transparent background by default).
`--json` prints a summary to stdout: board size in mm, layer count, footprint/track/via counts,
and the path of every PNG written. Exit code 0 on success, 1 if any input failed, 2 for bad flags.

## 3. Useful options

    --views top,bottom,angle,angle-bottom,front,side   # or: all
    --views hero=45/30 --views low=20/12/ortho          # custom azimuth/elevation[/persp|ortho]
    --width 1600 --height 1200 --supersample 2          # image size, anti-aliasing 1-4
    --bg "#ffffff"                                      # or transparent (default)
    --mask black --finish silver --silk white           # override board colours
    --no-components                                     # bare board, no body boxes

Limits to tell the user about: footprint 3D models are not drawn (components are boxes sized
from fab outlines); only the outer copper layers are visible. GitHub inputs use the anonymous
API (60 requests/hour) unless GITHUB_TOKEN is set.

Library & CLI

Same engine, three ways.

The renderer is the pcb23d npm package. The CLI is that package compiled by Bun into one binary per platform.

TypeScript

import { renderPcb } from "pcb23d";

const out = await renderPcb(zipBytes, {
  views: ["top", "bottom", "angle"],
  width: 1600, height: 1200,
});
await Bun.write("top.png", out.images.top.png);

bun add pcb23d · works in Bun, Node 18+, Deno, and browsers.

Single binary

pcb23d board.zip --out renders
pcb23d *.kicad_pcb --views all --mask black
pcb23d hat.kicad_pcb --views hero=45/30 --bg #ffffff

Download for Linux, macOS, and Windows from GitHub Releases.