A roundup of changes and improvements to Quilter throughout the month of February.
1/ Welcome to Quilter! 👋
A couple of weeks ago, Quilter announced its Series A fundraise and launched our product in public open beta.
In the time since, more than one thousand new users have signed up to try Quilter, and they've collectively submitted hundreds of layout jobs with 37K+ components and 143K+ pins to place and route.
To all the new faces reading our newsletter for the first time – welcome to the Quilter community! We're glad that you're here 😄
2/ Fab for Free
Last week, we officially launched "Fab for Free", our new PCB ordering service that helps new and existing Quilter users build their Quilter-designed circuit boards (raw PCBs) for free!
If you missed the announcement, here's how it works:
- Generate a custom layout with Quilter
- Fill out a form to provide us with your shipping information and design files
- Get free PCBs (unassembled) delivered to the address you provided.
- Get more credits by posting your project build on our community forums
An LED breakout board, built with our Fab for Free program
3/ Alberto built a LED breakout board
Alberto is a senior hardware engineer who used Quilter to generate a 4 layer breakout board to evaluate an LED Driver for a new design.
Alberto worked with the Quilter team via our Fab for Free program to get a professional review of his AI-generated layout, and had prototypes built and shipped via JLCPCB with 24 hour turnaround – all for free.
"The boards work well – really appreciate [Quilter's] assistance and will most likely use Quilter again for rev 2."
– Alberto
4/ Improved file parsing
In the weeks since launch, we've resolved or improved user messages for the most common file parsing issues, including:
- ✅ Errors when parsing KiCAD v8 files (just GA'ed 🎉)
- ✅ Errors when parsing KiCAD project files
- ✅ Errors when parsing unsupported legacy (old) file formats
- ✅ Errors parsing input files with no board outline defined
- ✅ Errors that occurred when board components couldn't be linked to corresponding components in the provided schematic
Collectively, these fixes address ~90% of the file parsing problems that users encountered since launch.
Still having issues? You can chat with us 💬 or submit a bug report 🐛 using the widget in the bottom-right of the Quilter app, or post a question❓ in our community forums.
Until next time
For our small team, finally launching Quilter publicly was one of those magical (and stressful!) experiences that building a startup is all about.
On behalf of the entire team, we want to express our sincere thanks for being one of our earliest supporters. We're just getting started!
Thanks for being one of Quilter's earliest supporters!