PCB Panelization

Panelization is where you go from "one board layout" to "the thing the fab actually mills." Required for SMT assembly with rails, sometimes useful to lower per-unit cost on small boards. Pairs with PCB / EDA Suites and Fab-House Integration.

KiCad-native

• ★ KiKit — the dominant FOSS panelizer for KiCad. Mouse-bites, V-cuts, frames, fiducials, tooling holes; CLI-driven so it slots into Hardware CI/CD cleanly. MIT. Active in 2025–2026.
• KiCad's built-in panelization (v9+) — KiCad 9 introduced first-party panelization features (basic arrays, V-cut hints). Useful for simple cases; KiKit still wins for anything complex.
• PcbDraw (sister project of KiKit) — generates pretty SVG/PNG renders of a panel; great for docs and listings.

Fab-house auto-panelization

• ★ JLCPCB / PCBWay panel-by-customer — both will panelize for you (you supply edge spacing rules and quantity); cheap, fine for simple cases. Charge a small NRE.
• OSH Park "medium run" / panel-by-customer — OSH Park doesn't panelize complex shapes for you; works well for repeated rectangles.
• Aisler — auto-handles panelization for assembly orders.

Generic / format-agnostic

• gerber-panelize (e.g. gerber-panelize, pp_panelize, various Python scripts) — work on raw Gerbers, useful when EDA isn't KiCad. Quality varies wildly; review output carefully.
• GerbMerge — old-school CLI Gerber panelizer. Still works.
• GerberPanelizer (ThisIsNotRocketScience) — Windows GUI; simple drag-and-drop panel layout from Gerber inputs.

Eagle / Altium / others

• Altium's built-in panel editor — capable, included.
• Eagle's PanelMaker — discontinued with Eagle's sunset.
• Fusion Electronics has limited panelization in 2026; expected to grow.

Pick this if…

• Default for KiCad and you want it scriptable in CI: KiKit.
• Simple repeats of a single rectangular board: let JLCPCB / PCBWay do it for you.
• Non-KiCad EDA, just have Gerbers: GerberPanelizer or gerber-panelize, but eyeball the output.
• You need V-cuts + mouse-bites + fiducials + edge rails: KiKit.
• Marketing renders of the panel for product photos: PcbDraw on top of KiKit's output.