Hello Vincent- I'd be happy to hear more about what you have in mind for design rules that can improve this. If you have design mock-ups for calculator panels and/or DRC-type rules that can be codified, we should be able to work with you to help implement them.
The best way to share these ideas would be in a GitLab issue report. Use KiCad's Help->Report Bug menu option to get the link and formatting. Then, add your description and images. In this case, images will be very important. Seth [image: KiCad Services Corporation Logo] Seth Hillbrand *Lead Developer* +1-530-302-5483 Long Beach, CA www.kipro-pcb.com [email protected] On Tue, Nov 25, 2025 at 3:15 AM Vincent Grennerat < [email protected]> wrote: > I have been continuously using KiCad since 2005 (I am a former colleague > of JP Charras), and I am now focusing my research on increasing the > sustainability of electronics, especially at the PCB level. In this context > I am member of the DESIRE4EU research project (https://desire4eu-eic.eu) > which has the aim to bring to industry new innovative low-impact substrates > for PCB, compatible with current subtractive manufacturing technologies. > With Arduino onboard, we are currently designing (on KiCad of course!) the > next IoT Arduino board, through an eco-design approach. > > Part of my work consists of exploring new PCB design rules that would > significantly contribute to reduce the ecological footprint of PCBs > (typically 5 to 25% of an assembled electronic board), at the manufacturing > step and at end-of-life. I now think that CAD softwares could include sone > kind of eco-design tool to help the designers in evaluating and reducing > the ecological footprint of their design. The tool could be part of the > KiCad toolbox, inside the PCB Calculator application. Among other things, > it would probably rely on life cycle assessment macro-results (a small > database), upstream produced by some LCA software. > > I cannot be a software contributor to KiCad, but if some developers show > interest in this potential new tool, I could contribute to provide the > inputs and the design of the tool. I suppose that this "eco-design rules" > concept can seem rather vague for a lot of people, and I'd be delighted to > develop our research results on copper circularity, and how we can rethink > our way of laying out copper on the PCB layers. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "KiCad Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/2d4cbc40-474c-4e5e-baf9-018e9f83d97an%40kicad.org > <https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/2d4cbc40-474c-4e5e-baf9-018e9f83d97an%40kicad.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "KiCad Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAFdeG-qguYexB4GCqwHeM1Rwottry7S%3DuHH7XJndMqfQ3HwC-w%40mail.gmail.com.
