Buy, Download, Use, and never have to pay anything more unless you want to
Forever licence: $129 USD
- When you buy a FlexBV licence, it does not expire for that major version ever.
- FlexBV interlinks boardviews and schematics saving you the hassle of manually cross-referencing, to provide a smoother repair process, leaving you to keep your mind focused on finding the fault.
Switching to FlexBV will recoup the cost of its licence within a single business day in time saved
- Repairing modern high part density electronics devices demands the utilisation of boardview software. Advanced FlexBV boardview software integrates your boardview files with PDF schematics to substantially ease the process of tracking down faults and understanding damaged boards.
XZZ PCB Reading now implemented
NOW AVAILABLE after a long wait the world can now read the 'pcb' format files from the immense archives.
- NO subscription payment
- NO security concerns
- NO online requirement
- Finally be able to repair modern iPhone and iPads, among thousands of other boards without the risks
iPhone 7 in XZZ PCB format
Macbook BRD format file with associated PDF schematic
Who is it meant for?
- You're a professional repair agent who performs board level electronics repairs on devices with access to boardviews and schematics
- You're part of an assembly or rework team with an in-house, or contracted system
- You currently use OpenBoardview, or Landrex but want the PDF cross referencing and superior rendering
Key Features
- Cross searching between Boardview and Schematic
- Available for Windows (7, 8, 10, 111, macOS (Catalina) and Linux2
- Supports OpenBoardData diagnostic resources
- Multiple boardview file formats and more being added
- Does not require always-on internet
- English as primary language
1,2 Be sure to always verify the product will work on your system prior to purchase, use the demo or free version
OpenBoardData coverage indicated in green for 820-00165 board
Buy it and own it
- FlexBV is not a subscription model licence. You are purchasing a perpetual ownership licence. The price you pay today grants you the legal right to continue to use the FlexBV version you have purchased indefinitely, without expiration.
- FlexBV is licenced on a per concurrent user model, meaning you can have it installed on multiple machines, but only one in use at any given time
- FlexBV costs $129.00 USD per licence
- Upgrade from prior versions for $67.00 USD
- Email support for 12 months
- FlexBV upgrades at no cost for licenced major version (ie, Version 5)
What about the boardviews?
- For legal reasons boardviews and schematics are not able to be bundled with FlexBV as much as we wish we could but they are readily available and you're not limited to what ever would have been bundled. If you can find the boardview and the schematic PDF then you can add it to FlexBV (most common formats supported).
| Device Type | Availability |
|---|
| Macbook | Almost no limit on the availability of Macbook boardviews and schematics. Easily available at no cost from places such as Badcaps.Net for no cost, just sign up and download. New Macbook boards routinely uploaded |
| iPhones/iPads | Many of the older iPhones currently available in BRD or BVR format from Badcaps.Net. There are various projects in the works to provide more recent versions up to and including the iPhone 12. |
| Android phones/tablets | Not as common to find as the iPhone/iPads but there is some availability |
| PC Laptops | In most cases Badcaps will have any available boardviews accessible. Sometimes you'll have to make a specific request in the Schematic Requests section and if someone has one they'll provide it |
| PC Desktops | There are large collections from some brands such as MSI and ASUS but the general availability of them is less common than PC Laptops. A lot of boards are provided as CAD (GenCAD) files which FlexBV supports. |
| Other consumer electronics | Currently we don't see a lot of devices with boardviews & schematics being offered, but you can always try ask the manufacturer if they can supply a limited GenCAD export ( top and bottom layers only ) as well as the schematic, though with the current commercial mentalities the chances are sadly quite low |
How does it compare?
| Feature |
FlexBV |
FlexBV Free |
Landrex |
Boardviewer |
OpenBoardview |
| Cost |
$129.00 USD. Updates for purchased licence version free (ie, V5) |
Free |
Free |
Free |
Free |
| Licence type
| Per concurrent seat licence, perpetual |
Closed |
Closed |
Closed |
MIT |
| Support
| Direct email for 12 months |
Community |
None |
None |
Community |
| Internet connectivity required?
| No |
No |
Unknown |
Unknown |
No |
Cross Platform (Windows, macOS, Linux)
Be sure to always verify the product will work on your system prior to purchase, use the demo or free version
|
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
| Modern UI & graphics |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
| Language Support |
English |
English |
|
|
|
| OpenBoardData Support |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
| Supported file formats |
XinZhiZao (pcb), Teboview (tvw), Landrex/Macbook "brd"1Allegro binary BRD not supported, bdv, cst, asc, bvr, bvr2, bvre, cad, fzNo key required, fab, hyp, odb2Single file format exported from OrCAD. Different to odb++, GenCAD, Altium Designer / Protel*ASCII/plain-text export, IPC-D-356[A] |
(same as full version) |
brd |
brd, fz, teboview |
brd, cad, fz*Manual key required, bvr |
| Board Annotations |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
| Butterfly View |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
| Open Source Contributor
| Yes |
N/A |
No |
No |
Yes |
| PDF Cross Referencing |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
| Part Finder |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
| Job tracking |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
| PCB Theme Engine |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
| SVG Export |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
| BVR3 Export |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
Need a free edition and can live without the extra features?
- Does not expire
- If you don't need the schematic coupling or any of the other extra features but you want something that's more recent than existing free products, there's now a free edition of FlexBV.
- No time limit, no subscription, same great core engine that is used for the paid & licenced edition of FlexBV
- All the same file formats supported and even has OpenBoardData support built right in including diagnostic guides
Need Support?
- Note: English is the only supported language.
- For all enquries, in please email Support.
- Please allow up to one (1) business working day for a response; usually responses are a lot faster but sometimes it can take up to a day.
- If you have not received a response within a business day check your spam filter
- If you're having trouble loading a file, please send through a copy of the file so we can examine it
- Please don't use PayPal disputes for support requests.
Teboview support with defined pad & part outlines, and silkscreen
GenCAD support with defined pad & part outlines
Recent Updates
- Nov 29, 2024: 5.0454
- XZZ PCB support now implemented (beta)
- More features to be added over time
- Nov 6, 2024: 5.0436
- FEATURE: MiniMap added. Check preferences and color preferences for configurable options
- Zoom-in crash fix with truly obscure fault
- macOS search combo disparity between BV and schem viewer fixed
- Oct 12, 2024: 5.0388
- ImGui updated to v1.91.3 which will now report UI issues/clashes
- Ghostmark/cursor reinstated with new user-adjustable parameters
- "Zoom Ring" feature added which creates a visual indication of the location of a part that has been selected via PDF or Infopanel search
- Board rotation centering fixed ( previously if you rotated it only rotated by the secondary board cursor position )
- Automatic board rotation on load to butterfly across the long board edges
- Fix issue of tooltips persisting when cursor moved over to Infopanel
- Network search results prioritise nucleating/spawning from a testpoint for the netweb display
- Aug 21, 2024: 5.0373
- ImGui upgraded to 1.91.0
- Fixed obscure crash caused when scrolling in context menu for test pad
- Fixed keyboard mapping configuration
- Refreshed context menu layout (hopefully clearer)
- Stopped imgui.ini files being saved to disk
- Logging now moved all to flexbv.log in $USERDIR type path
- July 30, 2024: 5.0360 ImGui upgraded to 1.90.9. Compensated for some non-sequenced GenCAD pad generations (KiCAD). Improved FZ pad naming/indexing on some files. Fixed BGA pad ordering index
- April 27, 2024: 5.0345 Fixed Teboview decoder crash on some rare files. Upgraded ImGui to 1.90.5
- Mar 23, 2024: 5.0339 Fixed lack of hover sensitivity near top/bottom edges of board
- Mar 20, 2024: 5.0338 Fixed issue with FlexBV not sleeping/idling causing high CPU demand
- Mar 20, 2024: 5.0337 Fixed obscure FZ decode bug. Improving font management (still). Improving Preferences section.
- Mar 17, 2024: 5.0329 SVG and BVR3 Export added (File->Export). Improved font memory consumption and performance penalties. Resolved some rare crashes on board loads
- Feb 22, 2024: 5.0315 Fix crash on zoom with some boards. Fixed empty-path issue with schematic part find
- Feb 17, 2024: 5.0311 Removal of unused keybindings. Moved grid feature to be off by default ( turn off using Preferences->Grid / Overlay -> Grid)
- Feb 13, 2024: Online manual for FlexBV5 now available here
- Feb 10, 2024: 5.0305 OBData parsing issue with some locales fixed (if you get 0.000 for values). Added version-check facility ( can be disabled in Help->About )
- Jan 30, 2024: 5.0293 Mirror issue resolved. Grid, Origin and Side display added. Board Image feature restored and fixed
- Jan 30, 2024: 5.0280 Missing OBData edit option restored
- Jan 28, 2024: 5.0279 Annotations and JobItem fixes
- Dec 9, 2023: 5.0259 Small crash with TVW pdf search fixed
- Dec 7, 2023: 5.0258 Rather severe crash issue fixed
- Dec 5, 2023: 5.0257 Teboview silkscreen layer added for non-free versions. General improvements
- Nov 21, 2023: 5.0247 Teboview custom pad orientation fix. Package outlines still need to be worked on.
- Nov 20, 2023: 5.0245 Teboview decoding support added (please email any board files that fail)
- Oct 27, 2023: 5.0217 Fixed issues causing crashing on some systems
- Sept 1, 2023: 5.0192 Fixed issue with OBData diagnosis/repair guides being partially broken
