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$150.00 USD Email and Discord support Free updates for all future V5 releases Includes Jobs and Library Cache No subscription No expiry |
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Download Free Edition
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Repairing modern high density electronics devices demands the utilisation of boardview software. FlexBV integrates your boardview files with schematics to substantially ease the process of tracking down faults and understanding damaged boards.
- XZZPCB
- • Landrex/Testlink BRD
- • GenCAD CAD
- • TeboView TVW
- • ASUS FZ
- • BVRaw BVR
- • IPC365 IPC
- • OrCAD ASCII Export OBD
- • Altium/Protel ASCII Export
- • Hyperlynx HYP
- • Fabmaster FAB
- • GR
- • ASC
- • CST
- • MDJSON MDJ
How does it compare?
| FlexBV Free | FlexBV | RU Boardviewer | XinZhiZao/ZXW/JCID | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | $150.00 USD No subscriptions No expiry Own your software |
Free | $40~300, annual subscription | |
| Licence type | Closed | Per concurrent seat licence, non-expiring, discounted upgrade to next major version | Closed | Subscription | |
| Support | Community | Direct email for 12 months | None | Community | |
| Internet connectivity required? | No | Unknown | Yes | ||
| Unlimited Boardview Loading | Yes | Yes | No; alternative loading not permitted, additional boardviews cannot be added | ||
| 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 | No | Yes (win & macos) | ||
| Modern UI & graphics | Yes (SDL3 & ImGUI) | No | No | ||
| Language Support | English | Russian, English | Chinese, English | ||
| OpenBoardData Support | No | Yes | No | No | |
| Supported file formats | XinZhiZao (pcb), Teboview (tvw), Landrex/Macbook "brd"1Allegro binary BRD not supported, bdv, gr, 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] | brd, fz, teboview, cad | pcb, brd, fz, teboview, cad | ||
| Library Cache Permits faster searching of boards without knowing specific board filename |
No | Yes | No | Yes | |
| MiniMap | No | Yes | No | No | |
| Board Annotations | No | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Butterfly View | No | Yes | No | No | |
| PDF Cross Referencing | No | Yes | No | No | |
| Part Finder | No | Yes | No | No | |
| Job tracking | No | Yes | No | No | |
| PCB Theme Engine | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Open Source Contributor | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
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
- Per concurrent seat perpetual ownership licence, no subcriptions, upgrade only when you want to
- Library caching means you can rapidly load boards from an archive of tens-of-thousands
- Built in job support with easy access to SQLite3 database for alternative integrations
- Available for Windows (10, 111, macOS (Monterey) and Linux2
- Supports OpenBoardData diagnostic resources
- More boardview formats supported than any other standalone offering
- Customisable themes with several built in defaults
- Concurrent split board view (Butterfly mode)
- Does not require always-on internet
- English as primary language
- Board annotations
How to use Boardviews and Schematics
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.
iPhone 7 in XZZ PCB format
iPhone 7Plus showing Constellation & Mycelium network view of PP_VDD_MAIN
ASUS J1800 MiniITX board with custom pad shapes, drills, and testpads
nVidia RTX2080 GFX card in RetroBV colour theme
Teboview support with defined pad & part outlines, and silkscreen
Recent Updates
- March 21, 2026: 5.1374
- Removed debugging output that was causing some slowdown on loading of boards
- Move final double flip & fit routine to end of board load
- March 20, 2026: 5.1372
- FEATURES ADDED
- [Full] Netweb Constellation mode - superior visual representation of interconnected parts, especially with CPU/GPUs that contain many instances of pins with the same network
- [Full] Mycelium Network - looks for interconnected networks to provide greater visual indication of the expanse of a given network
- [Full] Netweb network name based colouring - creating visually distinct netweb portions based on the network name
- [Full] Multisearch - find common nets between multiple parts
- [Full] Added minimap expand/shrink icon
- [Full] Automagic detection of 'link' class components on load ( used with the Mycelium network feature )
- [Full] Inspection history ( active list of prior selected pins/parts )
- [All] Tooltip hover delay - adjustable from 0 - 2 seconds for how long to wait on hovering a pad/part before the tooltip is visible
- [All] Show pin names of part only when part is hovered ( can be reverted to original setting )
- [All] Global coordinate display added ( by default boards are normalised to have a 0,0 origin )
- OBData part 'link' type added (indicates part is low-ohm, inductor, fuse, wire link, jumper or similar type component)
- FILE FORMAT CHANGES (all editions)
- Nail support added back in for BRD,BRD2,FZ, and ASC
- ASUS FZ: Added support for silkscreen, pad outlines and part outlines
- SamsungCAD: Added support to ignore embedded NUL chars
- SamsungCAD: Added support for pad board outlines
- GenCAD: Added support for invalid GenCAD export files from "JNT-DROP" and "xy HTML" converters (Read the GenCAD 1.4 specification please and fix your exporters)
- GenCAD: Added support for top/bottom silkscreen (often confused for being a trace layer in other implementations)
- GenCAD: Added support for bottom-only pins, used with edge connectors a lot in Graphics cards like RTX5070 etc
- BRD: Fixed situation where boardspace goes to infinity leaving what seems to be an empty display
- FIXES/CHANGES
- Moved from MaterialIcons to MaterialSymbols for UI icons
- Sidebar part:pin display cleaned up
- Drill definitions changed to be diameter as per industry noclemature
- Fixed minimap being locked out during sidebar drag
- Fixed crash caused by attempting to migrate metafiles that didn't exist
- Leading-dot filenames removed from schematic search list
- Update t o SDL_image 3.2.4
- Fix Windows 10/11 non-integer pixel scaling (force to 1.0) causing mouse/pointer drift from origin
- Updated to ImGui 1.92.4
- Updated to SDL3 3.2.24
- Fix Teboview network name mismatching (caused by rare occurrence of second listing, please submit any further examples)
- Differentiate silkscreen colouring on Olive theme to make silkscreen not be confused with NC vias/pads
- macOS HighDPI fixes
- Fix screen shot datecode encoding name
- Fix keycode encoding (ImGui)
- Move pgup/down key settings to schematic settings
- Enhance ASUS FZ package name metadata parsing
- Enhance GenCAD testpins parsing
- Stop reading showPartHull flag from theme file
- Moved macOS build from Catalina system to BigSur
- Screenshot facility added ( saves to PNG in FlexBV screenshot folder ). Keyboard (ctrl+printscreen) and menu button activiation option
- GenCAD shapes parsing improvements
- ASUS FZ parsing improvements
- Theme consistency cleanups for built-in themes ( was missing various elements which would fall to defaults )
- Keep view->part hull status across loads
- Initial Sprint Layout 6 format support added (.lay6)
- Sidebar visual optimisations
- ImGui backend updated to v1.92.0 and dynamic fonts enabled
- SDL3 pixel scale added ( hopefully resolves some macOS highDPI issues )
- Schematic viewer with adjustable AA ( see Preferences-Schematic Viewer )
- Font size selection simplified to single main/central font size
- Bold font dropped and monospace now used for part names and text notes
- Sidebar selected parts tree node display changed for reduced visual clutter
- Teboview parsing massively overhauled, though only affects ~2% of files. If you have a crashing Teboview file please send it in for analysis.
- BRD format outline parsing clash resolved ( would result in extremely wide boards )
- Improved GR file handling, now its own file format rather than a subset of BRD2
- Free build feature selection restructured
- Schematic viewer can now be also remotely updated for Windows and linux
- MAJOR BACKEND UPDATE: Moved from SDL2 to SDL3 for GFX backend / rendering. Improvements across the board internally with performance and quality, especially on macOS. This should also hopefully resolve the macOS keyboard-access permissions that were problematic with SDL2. Version number has been pushed to 5.1xxx to reflect the large change.
- Core: Added missing .bdv extension to filter list
- Core: Fix up uncompensated pin radius offset during normalisation phase
- FileFormat: Refined NC-net selection to try prevent valid NCxyz123 type networks being marked as NC
- OBData: Add [url:URL Title] support for external links and ability to disable in Preferences->OBData
- macOS: Trying to stop macOS requesting universal keyboard inputs (SDL2 issue)
- FEATURE: (licenced) Horizontal board flipping
- FEATURE: (licenced) Selectable preferences of horizontal or vertical flipping with mod-key alternative combo
- TeboView/TVW: Resolve offset polygon stencils
- UI: Fix macOS Sequoia issue with File-Open/Save not working, likewise folder-select
- UI: Update macOS icon
- FEATURE: Add FPS control via Settings->Preferences-FlexBV Preferences-FPS Desired
- FEATURE: Store board orientation via Board->Save Board State
- FEATURE: Added adjustable seconds to idle parameter in settings via Settings->Preferences-FlexBV Preferences-Seconds before idle
- DEMO: Set to 3 days for evaluation
- XZZPCB: Improved drill detection
- XZZPCB: Improved debutterflying
- UI: Improve cache list keyboard scroll-through (autowrap)
- UI: Automatically flip board on loading to bias more pins to display center
- XZZPCB: Support re-enabled for 2-sided boards (rare occurence but they do exist)
- Cache: Support for up/down->enter keyboard sequence for selecting items from search results
- NEW FEATURE: Meta Central, Licenced edition only
- Meta central will store board settings and obdata in a centalised location rather than directly with the boardview file
- Meta Central will by default migrate existing meta files to the centralised location as you utilise the boardview files
- Cache: Added depth control
- Cache: Added file extension as part of the search space
- Cache: Changed algorithm to word-token base (reverted fuzzy algorithm due to too many false hits and confusion)
- Cache: Changed build (scan) to concurrently filter boardviews and schematics
- Cache: Added missing .CST extension support
- UI: Font engine adjusted to reduce GFX memory demands (sometimes causing blocks to appear instead of text)
- NEW FEATURE: Library (Cache), Licenced edition only
- Collates multiple boardview archive folders under a single simple search field allowing you to simply type in the partial name of the board you're seeking and a list of matches is provided instantly to select from within the File menu
- Greatly eases the task of finding the boardfiles you have collected without having to know where in the archive you've stored them
- You'll wonder how you ever lived without it before
- UI: Improve disabling of board/minimap while other windows are in the front
- UI: Wordwrap added for job and annotation notes
- Backend: Reduce overrun frames before idling when window is not focused
- BRD2/GR: Fix mirrored-board issue and improved pin-through detection
- Library: Defer cache rebuild to user action instead of trying on startup (black screen of death, 5.0703)
- Library: Load cache via separate thread on startup to prevent ~2 second black screen if there's large cache files 5.0706)
- Library: Lock out Scan/Remove buttons on ALL library entries while a scan is being performed to ensure cache integrity
- XZZPCB: Octogon pad support added
- Backend: Reduce CPU consumption from part/pin hover
- Backend: Fix issue causing RB_tree breakage with some files
- UI: Fix excessive pin/pad select distances causing smaller parts to be unselectable
- FEATURE: Added next/prev keys for OBData diagnostic sequencing. Defaults to ] and [
- FEATURE: Added fast-select pin list for a given net in the sidebar under the selected net header. Feature lists all the pins (and parts) associated with the selected network. This is a rework & improvement of what was trying to be done previously with the per-part expanded listing.
- UI: Fix broken context menu on free version
- UI: Fix inability to use ctrl-O to open a board before a board was loaded prior
- UI: Add missing halo-dot and part fill in single-side minimap view
- File format BVR3: Fix pin-through/DIP pin specification export ( and import )
- File format TVW: Fixed missing testpads
- Backend: Converted all FP types to same type (float)
- Backend: Optimise rendering engine
- Themes: Retro BV theme added, old style look with FlexBV advanced features
- UI: Rewriting of almost all dialogs to new bordered table style
- UI: Ability to copy fields to clipboard by clicking on them for part name, net name
- UI: Clicking on lower-right filename opens folder of file location
- UI: Jobs database folder accessible via Jobs->Open Jobs DB Folder
- Netweb: Netweb improvements for both main and minimap
- Netweb: Fix netweb to ensure focus on testpoints as priority
- File Formats: More data extracted out of ASUS FZ for part names/types
- UI: Added all GND|NC pin parts to types that can be hidden (heatsinks, shields etc)
- UI: Fix inverted netweb
- UI: Fix missing netweb on net search in some situations
- UI: Improve part-hover selection algorithm
- UI: Fix invocation of explorer for theme and log folders on Windows
- FileFormats: Refactoring of core file format code (BRDSide, BRDMountType, BRDOutlineType)
- Updates: Fix update system to properly attempt 3 times
- Logging: Fix crashlogs submission system
- UI: Fix missing GND pads/drills in TVW ( were marked as NC )
- UI: Fix Free version "version number" issue (-1)
- UI: Add case-insensitive filters for board formats in NFD-extended picker
- UI: Fix missing pin number when OBData turned off
- UI: Fix inability to select part by hovering non-pin area if it was pin-through/both-sides
- UI: Add associated part theme elements, parts that are connected to the currently selected net/pin but not the currently selected part
- FileFormat: Make changes to GR format parsing to add x-y flipping and outline adjustment
- Diagnostics: Added folder-open facility for examining logs and themes
- Diagnostics: Changed log system to now use %data%/logs/PID.log format
- Diganostics: Detect logs from crashed instances and offer to send them in for analysis with associated BV
- Rendering: Fix outline bug
- Control: Fix rotate-on-mouse-point displacement offset
- Fix issue with part find feature that would crash on some special symlinks due to uncaught exception.
- Added multiple-attempts for downloading latest package rather than exiting after initial failure.
- More build cleanups / warning-messages
- Automagic xzzpcb board splitting to provide proper top/bottom siding
- xzzpcb splitting on/off setting added to settings
- Discord link added to Help menu for online support / general talk
- Many small bugs squashed
- Added options to control all-NC/GND part-hiding in Settings
- Updated online manual with new features/settings
- Update button in bottom-left has 'Update' text added for clarity
- Migrated to NativeFileDialog-Extended for file picker. Non-boardview files will now be masked out from the file list making it easier to select the correct files.
- Added heuristic filtering to move annoying non-components to hidden status such as heatsinks and brackets which can often obscure the boardview
- Hidden item visibility and active-status can now be toggled by 3-state eye icon on menu bar. Hovering on eye icon will provide details if any parts have been hidden
- Increased update facility timeout limit to permit for slower connections
- Compensate for "XY HTML" export issues with pad placements causing ugly overlaps and incorrect rendering
- Work around "XY HTML" degenerate GenCAD export with pin:pad:padstack 1:1:1 ratio generation which caused in O(N3) load time
- Bring part type/package data across from GenCAD to MfgData in pin/part display
- Fixed Windows UTF8/WCHAR command line parameter support without requiring UTF8-beta enabled in Windows settings
- Integrated update facility added for Windows and Linux versions ( macOS is going to require more time to work out signing )
- Changed font from Roboto to NotoSC in order to support Chinese characters ( common for many boards/filenames )
- Fixed pad-popout issues with some parts where a large round pad was specified among many other smaller pads (ie, MOSFET with trunked tab)
- Slight optimisation in CPU consumption through improved calculation caching
- CAE file format support added
- Decoded & uncompressed FZ support reinstated
- Reorganised hover-over tooltip details for pin/parts (Misc / Meta)
Mostly improvements to the sidebar UI/UX in this release along with trying to streamline the apperance of many smaller items in the system. If you have any issues with the UI/UX please report them as tersely / simply as possible and preferrably a single issue at a time unless you believe they're specifically related to a bug; this style of reporting means that there's less chance of missing things that might need addressing due to swamping.
- Filename in status/title is now cropped to just the basic filename ( hover-over to show full path)
- Clipboard contents shown in status bar
- Currently selected pin/part in status bar
- Position in status bar
- Pins on selected network shown in the sidebar and if the part has a lot of pins then the 'hits' are summarised at the top of the part table
- Hovering over a part on the board, or hovering a pin/part in the side bar shows it in the minimap
- Hovering over part on the board will highlight matching table in sidebar if relevant
- Hovering over pin row in side bar will highlight pin on board
- Hovering over pin on board will highlight sidebar pin row if relevant
- User manual updated
- User manual accessible via Help->Online manual
- New version indication will appear in bottom-left corner as active link to download page
- Fix zoom-crash bug caused by unclipped via/drills
- Rendering improvements with holes/vias/pads on xzzpcb format
- XZZ PCB support now implemented (beta)
- More features to be added over time
- 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
- 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
- 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