kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/11/2012 11:54 AM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> On 11/14/2012 9:48 AM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
>> I guess the other thing to keep in mind is that there are no plans to delete the
>> LEGACY_PLUGIN.  PLUGINs are responsible for
>>
>>
>> a) loading and saving BOARDs.
>>
>> b) using footprint libraries in a particular storage format.
>>
>>
>> Technically, we do not even have to convert our current libraries to the new format.  The
>> library table support will allow you to co-mingle libraries of the two formats seemlessly.
>>
>>
>> 1) After that, with a half day's work you will also be able to simply read Eagle version 6
>> footprints in their native format also, no file format conversion necessary.
>>
>>
>> This is the PLUGIN design showing its stuff.
>>
>>
>> 2) We could use one for Geda footprints also.
>>
>>
>> 3) There has been some work done on Orcad footprint libraries already.
> Dick,
>
> Is this one of the branches on Launchpad and if so which one?  This is
> something that could be very useful for me as Orcad 10 is what I have at
> work so I have plenty of custom footprints in this format that I would
> like to convert over to KiCad.

Uncle Charlie was working on that.  I will ask him about it.  Its been awhile since we've
talked.



>
>>
>> A volunteer is needed for 2).  We can import a geda footprint now, but that code might be
>> better served to inside a PLUGIN.
> I've been looking over the Geda footprint import code and I think it
> would be fairly straight forward to port it over to a PLUGIN.  I will
> volunteer to do at least this much.  That way we have a unified method
> for importing footprint libraries when we go live with the footprint
> table code.  I've never used the Geda footprint import code before so I
> cannot attest to it's usefulness or quality.  Does anyone know how well
> this code works so I can avoid any pitfalls?  Please note this will only
> support reading Geda footprint libraries.  Writing footprint libraries,
> reading board layouts, and/or writing board layouts is not something I
> would find very useful so I will leave this as an exercise for someone
> who needs this capability.


Cool.  Go for it.

If you want, there is also about only an hour or so to add EAGLE_PLUGIN::FootprintLoad(). 
You'd just have to factor what is already there to expose footprints rather than loading
the board.  There seems to be only one kind of file in Eagle 6, for everything:
schematics, board, footprints.  Find the footprints and return one.  Part of that is being
done already.  It's cake, I did the hard part.