January 15, 2026

SalixEDA v3.0 — a new stage of development

After 10 years of developing the SaliCAD project, which itself is the successor to an even earlier development (see project history), I made the decision to fully rebrand the project. Today I am pleased to announce that I have fully transitioned to SalixEDA 3.0.

The rebranding affected more than just the name. In January 2026, I carried out a deep update, the key change of which was a new concept for managing component libraries.

Private cloud — libraries without publishing

In SaliCAD, the cornerstone was the central public library. It is good for common, public components. But many developers do not want or cannot publish their work for various reasons: trade secrets, NDAs, internal corporate standards, or simply a desire to maintain control over the library.

For such users, SalixEDA 3.0 introduces a private cloud.

It is implemented as simply and freely as possible:

Each user automatically receives space for a private cloud on the SalixEDA server the first time they run the program.
The cloud is identified by a unique code, which is displayed in the program settings.
You can share this code with colleagues or use it on your other computers.
All users connected to the same cloud share a common library: changes made by one are automatically synchronized with the local storages of all others.

Visual difference: public components are now marked with a blue globe in the toolbar and in the name. Private components have no such indicator.

Public library moderation

To protect the public library from junk (inevitable when novice users experiment with publishing), I have introduced restrictions. Only registered users can now publish components.

Registration is extremely simple: just provide a nickname and (optionally) an email address. It is only needed so that users approach publishing thoughtfully, rather than doing it "for testing."

New website and other changes

The name change also entailed a server change. The previous site ran on the GetSimple CMS, which is no longer supported. After reviewing the alternatives, I decided to abandon ready-made CMS entirely and implemented my own PHP engine, optimized for the needs of SalixEDA.

This turned out to be a very good decision — now maintaining the site has become much easier, and performance has increased. I will talk about the structure of the new site in a separate article.