File viewers for electrical & electronic CAD/CAM formats

Altium Designer can be licensed as a free Viewer Edition, which allows read-only access to Designer files. It appears that you have to request the program from Altium directly, and the license must be renewed annually.

Altium offers a "legacy" P-CAD viewer at no cost:

• http://www.altium.com/community/downloads/legacy_p-cad.cfm

Cadence supports their OrCAD and Allegro CAD applications using several different viewers. The Allegro viewer:

• http://www.cadence.com/products/pcb/Pages/Downloads.aspx

Cadence OrCAD Capture/OrCAD Capture CIS ViewReader:

• http://www.cadence.com/products/orcad/Pages/orcaddownloads.aspx

CadSoft doesn't exactly offer a viewer, but their free EAGLE Light Edition product can view and print (but can't edit) full-sized designs:

• http://www.cadsoftusa.com/downloads/freeware/

BronzeWare has free Gerber and Protel ASCII PCB viewer called GerbMagic:

• http://www.bronzware.com/GerbMagic/about.htm

There are also no-charge Gerber file viewers from PentaLogix (ViewMate) and GraphiCode (GC-Preview):

• http://www.pentalogix.com/viewmate.php
• http://www.graphicode.com/#_GC-Prevue

Mentor Graphics offers two different products, the Expedition PCB Browser and Design Capture Browser:

• http://www.mentor.com/products/pcb-system-design/browsers

For PADS users, Mentor's PADS Free PCB Viewer:

• http://www.mentor.com/products/pcb-system-design/design-flows/pads/pads-pcb-viewer

Mentor also has a visECAD Viewer Software:

• http://www.mentor.com/products/pcb-system-design/fabrication-assembly-test/visecad/visecad-evaluation

You can download a free CADSTAR Design Viewer from Zuken:

• http://www.cadstarworld.com/products_dviewer.asp

Third-party applications are listed as a convenience, but the listing is not necessarily an endorsement of the supplier or product. We do not receive compensation for any listing, have not tested these products, nor do we provide support for any product listed. We would appreciate learning of any additions or corrections to make this list more useful. Product names on these pages may be trademarks of other companies, and we make no claim to any of them.