Design a PCB
together
Send someone a link and they are in your board: same schematic, same layout, their cursor next to yours. Here is how PCB design collaboration works in Cherry Blossom, who can see and change what, and what happens to your work when the connection does not hold.
Can two people edit the same PCB at the same time?
Yes. Everyone with a project open shows up as a face in the top bar. On the same view you see each person’s cursor, and what they have selected is outlined in their colour with their name. Each edit lands in everyone’s copy as it is made. There are no locks and nothing to merge.
Click a face to follow that person’s view, until you move it yourself, click the canvas, switch view, or press Esc. That is the useful part in a review: one person walks the board, the other follows along, and you both look at the same decoupling cap while you talk about it.
Undo and redo are yours. They take back your own steps and leave everyone else’s alone, so you cannot undo a teammate’s routing by accident. The one exception to “everyone edits at once” is whole-board actions: placing, re-packing and routing the PCB, and tidying or cleaning up the schematic. Those run one at a time. While someone runs one, the others see who is doing what, and the buttons for those actions are off until it is done. Each person’s Sakura runs on their own plan.
How do I share a PCB design online?
Two routes: by email, which gives a person a role, or by link, which gives anyone who has it a role. Sharing is on every plan.
By email. Select Share in the top bar, enter one or more addresses (up to 10 in one invitation), choose Can edit or Can view, add a note if you like, and send. Each person gets an email. The link in it opens a page that says which address the invitation went to and who is signed in. Signed out, it offers a free account or sign in. Signed in, Open project adds them to the project, whatever address their account uses, and it appears on their Projects page. An invitation link works for 14 days, and from the Share dialog you can copy it, send it again or withdraw it. A project can have up to 25 people besides its owner.
By link. A project’s link is its own address in the editor. Under General access in the Share dialog, the owner switches Only people invited to Anyone with the link, picks Can view or Can edit, and copies the link. Post it in a chat, a forum thread or an issue, and anyone who opens it gets a live editor that updates as people work, without making an account.
Who can do what in a shared project
| Role | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Owner | Edits, invites, changes anyone's role, removes people, and turns link sharing on or off. |
| Can edit | Edits the project and invites others. |
| Can view | Opens it read-only: looks around, selects, sees what the checks find, and exports. Cannot change anything. |
Full details are in the sharing docs.
What does someone see if they are not signed in?
A live, view-only editor. A signed-out visitor can look around the project and watch it change, and that holds even when the link is set to Can edit: to edit, they sign in or make a free account. It covers the common case of wanting a colleague, a client or a forum to look at a board without a signup wall.
People who open the link signed in get the project on their Projects page. They see names and faces, not email addresses, and they cannot invite people by email: they pass the link on instead. They do not count toward the 25-person limit, since a link posted somewhere can bring many viewers.
The owner stays in control. Changing what the link allows changes it for everyone who has it, at once. Switching back to Only people invited takes the project away from everyone who has only the link, while the people you invited keep their access. Only an invitation sent by the owner can raise someone’s role, so an editor cannot re-promote a viewer the owner demoted.
Can I go back to an earlier version of my PCB design?
Yes. Version history keeps copies as the project is edited, and shows what changed between them.
The clock button in the top bar opens Version history: the project as it is now, then the kept copies, newest first. Each shows the time, who edited in that span, and what changed: parts, wires, traces, vias, zones, labels and other items, counted as added, removed or changed. Click one and the canvas shows it read-only under a banner, with Back to current. Behind the banner the live project keeps following other people’s edits.
A copy is kept when a project has none yet, on the first edit after 10 idle minutes, and at most every 15 minutes while someone keeps editing. Older copies are thinned out: everything from the last day, one an hour for a week, one a day for a month, one a week for a year. Naming a version keeps it for good, which is worth doing before a big change such as re-routing a four-layer board.
Restore makes the old version the project again for everyone. The current state is saved as a version first, so a restore can be undone by restoring that one. It clears your undo history. Viewers can list and open versions; only owners and editors can restore or name them.
The limit: you can look at one version at a time. There is no side-by-side diff of two versions on the canvas yet, and no partial restore of a single part.
What happens to my changes if my login drops or I reload?
This one came from a real bug. A Pro user found changes missing when he opened his project in a second tab. His session looked fine on screen, but the editor’s connection to our database had lost its sign-in after one failed token refresh, and every save after that was refused. Hours of work sat in one open tab and nowhere else. We fixed it in layers.
When your session is still good but the database connection is not, the editor signs itself back in. It asks for a fresh token again: 2 seconds after the drop, then with longer waits up to a minute, and straight away when the tab is shown again, the window gets focus or the browser comes back online.
A blip changes nothing. A save that fails for a few seconds is sent again while you keep working, so a drag or a Sakura task carries on. If saves keep failing, editing pauses so no more work piles up unsaved, and Sakura waits for it to come back before going on.
While editing is paused, the editor says so. A strip says your latest changes are not saved yet, with Reload and Download a copy. Download a copy saves what is on screen, unsaved edits included, as a project file you can open as a new project.
Reloading keeps your unsaved edits. The tab holds on to them as the page goes, and the project sends them first when it opens again, after you sign in again if your session has ended. A batch that had already landed is recognised and not applied twice.
One honest limit. The unsaved edits are kept in the tab, not on your computer: close the tab while editing is paused and they are gone, which is why the browser asks before it closes.
Collaboration is one part of the launch described in the Cherry Blossom v2 announcement. To bring a board in from elsewhere before sharing it, see how to import a KiCad project. Sharing needs no paid plan; the pricing page covers what the AI costs.
Questions
Yes. In Cherry Blossom, everyone with a project open sees the others' faces in the top bar, their cursors, and what they have selected, and each edit lands in every copy as it is made. There are no locks and nothing to merge. Undo only takes back your own steps. Whole-board actions such as placing, re-packing and routing the PCB, or tidying the schematic, run one at a time, so while one person runs one, the others see who is doing it and those buttons are off until it finishes.
Two ways. Select Share in the editor's top bar, enter one or more email addresses, choose Can edit or Can view, and send: each person gets an email with a link to the project. Or, as the owner, open General access in the same dialog, switch Only people invited to Anyone with the link, choose Can view or Can edit, and copy the link. Anyone with the link can look at the project without an account.
Yes, if you turn on link sharing. A signed-out visitor gets a live, view-only editor that updates as people edit. Even if the link allows editing, someone who is signed out can only view: to edit, they sign in or make a free account. Link visitors see names and faces but not email addresses, and they cannot invite people by email.
Yes. The clock button in the top bar opens Version history: the project as it is now, then earlier copies newest first, each showing who edited and what changed (parts, wires, traces, vias, zones, labels). Click one to see it read-only. Owners and editors can restore it, which makes it the project again for everyone. The current state is saved as a version first, so a restore can itself be undone. Owners and editors can also name a version to keep it for good.
A blip of a few seconds changes nothing: the edits are sent again and you keep working. If saving keeps failing, editing pauses so no more work piles up unsaved, and a strip says so, with Reload and Download a copy buttons. Reloading keeps your unsaved edits: the tab holds on to them and sends them when the project opens again, after you sign in again if your session has ended. Download a copy saves what is on screen, unsaved edits included, as a project file. Closing the tab loses them, which is why the browser asks first.
A project can be shared with up to 25 people besides its owner, counting members and open invitations together, and one invitation can name up to 10 addresses. Sharing is not a plan feature: it is available on every plan. Each collaborator's Sakura AI runs on their own plan, not yours. People who only open the project through its link are not counted toward the 25.
Open a board and send someone the link.
Edit together in the browser, keep every version, and share by email or link. Sharing is on every plan.
By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
