kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm the only one with difficulties with gencad importers???

The original format is more or less rejected by everyone, I fixed it for
gerbtool (the CAM used by our fabricator), but it comes wrong in CAM350... I'm
getting crazy! it seems that every parser around has a different interpretation
of the standard (which is, in fact, pretty clear)

Actually it seems that every importer around is not compliant (especially for
back side components, someone flips the padstack on FLIP, someone else on
bottom placement... and the standard says yet another thing!); gerbtool *needs*
padstacks (which are officially optionals), CAM350 reads them but in the table
they all are 'unused' (but at least the pads are right!)

Anyway, I made the export work for *both* gerbtool and prontoplace (which
apparently use the same parser) and CAM350, too.. except silk shapes which
simply can't be done properly with both (CAM350 apparently only accepts closed
outlines, prontoplace 'forgets' to flip them...); anyway these days gencad is
only used as a netlist source for ATEs, so silks are not so important.

When I find again the coding conventions I could submit a patch (i.e.: where
are the coding conventions for kicad?:D)

Another kind of netlist which seems widely accepted is the IPC-D-356 (there are
also the 356-A and 356-B which are not compatible!); looking around it seems a
pretty easily generated format (more or less a drill file with associated the
net name); the only problem is the net name is limited to 14 chars... do we
have a standard 'shortened' net name or I need to generate aliases for them?

If someone else think it could be useful I can implement this.

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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