Free boardview viewer

A map of a circuit board for repair work: where each part and pin sits, on which side, and which net connects it. Repair technicians use it with the schematic to trace a signal from a chip to a test point.

Test_Link .brd (plain and scrambled), the BRDOUT .brd that KiCad exporters write, .bdv, .bvr (formats 1 and 3), .cad, .cst, GenCAD, KiCad .kicad_pcb, Eagle XML .brd, Altium ASCII, sets of .asc files (open format.asc, pins.asc and nails.asc together), and encrypted .fz, .cae and XZZ files with their key. A ZIP opens too, with any schematic PDF inside it. Binary Allegro, ODB++, Fabmaster, HyperLynx, Teboview and EasyEDA files don't open here yet. If you need one, email us a request.

FZ, CAE and XZZ files are encrypted with their maker's key. We don't supply keys. If you have the key, paste it in and the file opens; it's used in your browser tab and isn't saved or sent anywhere. Files in these formats that aren't encrypted open without one.

From OpenBoardData, a community archive of diode, voltage and resistance readings and diagnostic notes for about 100 boards, mostly Apple, released under the Open Database License. If your board's number is in the file's name, its data opens by itself: hover over a pin or click one to compare your meter with the known-good values, and open Repair for the diagnostic notes, whose parts and nets are links to the board and schematic. Otherwise pick the board in the Repair tab. We keep a snapshot on this site, so only the file for that board is requested from our server; your board file isn't sent. Readings vary with a board's state, so treat them as a guide. To add your own, use OpenBoardData's site.

No. This page is for a quick look on any computer, with nothing to install. For full-time bench work, FlexBV is a desktop boardview program that works with OpenBoardData, and it has more formats and bench features. OpenBoardView is the free, open-source desktop viewer most of these readers come from.

It helps you trace power rails. Apple writes the power state into a rail's name, as in PP3V3_S5, so the viewer sorts the board's rails into startup stages and draws each one on the board in its own color, with its known-good readings beside it. That works best on Apple boards and is only a guide: names don't always tell the whole story, not every rail gets sorted, other makers often name rails differently, and the schematic has the final word. Where OpenBoardData's notes describe a board's real power sequence, you can step through that line by line. It runs in your browser.

Yes, and it's the better route for boards without notes. In the Power AI tab, copy the prompt, paste it into the AI you use with your schematic PDF attached, and paste its answer back. The viewer draws the sequence on the board, using only rail names that are really on it. Your schematic goes to your AI under your own account, never to us, and the answer stays in your browser. AI can misread a schematic, so check the result against it.

It's an AI assistant for the board you have open. It answers from the selected part or net, its known-good readings and the board's repair notes, plus general repair knowledge, and suggests what to measure next. It's told never to make up a reading, and every value in an answer is checked against that data. AI can be wrong, so measure before you replace anything. It only takes questions about repairing boards. New answers come from DeepSeek, which may process your question outside the United States, including in China, and you get 10 of those free a day. It's a test for now, and new questions stop if it reaches its daily or monthly limit, though answers already in the library keep working.

Our own database of answers that passed the AI checks. When you ask something, the viewer looks there first. If the same question has been asked about the same board data, you get the saved answer straight away, with no AI call and no limit used, and you can see how many times it's been served. If not, the AI answers, and a clean answer is added for the next person. A reworded question counts as a new one for now. If an answer doesn't help, press Ask the AI again under it for a new one, which uses one of your 10. Enough of those withdraw the saved answer.

Every question and answer, with the board's number and which AI model wrote it. No IP address, no account and no file name, and email addresses, phone numbers and links are removed first. General questions are shared with everyone who uses the viewer. Follow-ups and anything using readings you entered stay on file and aren't shown to anyone else. Please leave personal details out of your questions.

Yes. Use the email link under the viewer. We read the requests and add a few as we go, with no promises on dates. Send a sample file only if you're allowed to share it.

The viewer reads the text in the PDF and matches each word against the board's part and net names. Matching words get a thin underline and can be clicked. Press Own window to move the schematic to a window of its own, on a second monitor if you have one; it stays linked to the board. The search box finds any text on the schematic. It needs a PDF with real text: a scanned schematic has no words to read. Where a sheet's label could mean two different nets, as when two sheets each have an X3, it stays unlinked rather than risk showing the wrong one.

No. Boards and schematics are read by your browser on your own device. Nothing is sent to a server, and they are gone when you leave or reload the page. The one exception is what you choose to send: pressing Ask sends your question to our server. If it isn't in the answer library, it goes on to our AI provider, DeepSeek, with the selected part or net, its readings, any readings you entered and the board's repair notes. The board file and its name aren't sent. Your view settings stay in your own browser's storage, not in a cookie, along with a file's name if you choose its repair data by hand, and any readings you enter. They never leave your device, and clearing your browser's site data removes them.

Most of the board readers are a TypeScript port of OpenBoardView, which is MIT licensed; the KiCad and Eagle readers are written from those formats' public documentation. PDF pages are drawn with Mozilla's pdf.js, under the Apache License 2.0. The license texts are in the third-party notices linked in the sources below.