kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Frank bennett <bennett78@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 08/07/2012 06:32 AM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> This came by personal mail in response to the questions I had in concern for supporting
> Orcad imports optimally:
>
>
> Hey Dick, at least I got paid for it
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dick Hollenbeck [mailto:dick@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 5:09 PM
> To: Carl Rash; KiCad Developers
> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] Proposal for batch plotting
>
> On 08/06/2012 03:40 PM, Carl Rash wrote:
> > I wrote an Orcad EDIF export to Kicad conversion,
I havn't looked at Carl's conversion yet.

Most parts or dev board vendors provide a DSN Orcad schematic
output which is binary in order to keep you captive to their tool.
I can usually read the DSN file and export EDIF2.0 from an
old version 7.20 using cap2edi.exe provided by Orcad and I'm
not sure newer releases even support this.
EDIF, an old standard, syntax is well documented. The latest
version 0.99 of edif2kicad is available either in kicad/contrib/imports
or at sourceforge. I have improved the conversion quality but
it still needs some work (see change_log.txt). One of Kicad's
great features is it's ASCII file formats.

The challenge is to get parts vendors to provide an EEschema
schematic for their demo boards and library symbols and footprints.
Picking OrCad, Eagle, etc over EDIF is not the best choice
for a standard but are user requests.

-Frank Bennett
> > Can a person use the "demo" version of Orcad to create this EDIF format from
> > an arbitrarily large project native file set?
> > (I am assuming EDIF is not the native format, correct me if I am wrong.)
> >
> > If not, how does a person with access to only free tools get a design from
> > Orcad to KiCad?  Can that native format be reverse engineered, a)
> > technically, b) legally?
> >
> > In answering b) is it location specific?
> >
> >
> > How does this tool differ from the one that Frank Bennet wrote and that is
> > now in the "contrib" branch?
> >
> >
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