kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Dick H." <dick@...>]

> Best guess, this is going to involve:
> - Converting the component layout and netlist data
> - Reading and converting the PCB footprint data
> - Converting the padstack data
> 
> So probably not a small job by any stretch of the imagination...

Philip,

Is this something you can do and want to do?

It would cost me a week or two to do it. I cannot contribute that
much money to the project without compensation. You might want to
explore a way to fund this by gathering funds from a consortium of
users. I once saw a website that made this easy to do.

Without coordinated funding, this project will only ever get what
folks can do for themselves. This is a deficiency of open source.

As a user now, you have to hope and pray (i.e. "wish") that somebody
donates their time on an enhancement that you point out. This is
wishful thinking at best. Your request goes onto a "wishlist" and may
sit there forever, unless you have the skills to code it yourself.

However, imagine a mechanism which would allow users to pool funds
from themselves and their peers, and create a work order for a
specific enhancement or bug fix. Then developers could justify
spending time on the work order, and the requests would then not be
considered mere "wishes".

Is this an idea worth exploring?

My current highest priority is to get usable zone support into the
project. So your "wish" cannot be granted by me at this time. Not
for free that is.


Dick Hollenbeck
SoftPLC Corporation
http://softplc.com