kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo_bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Kicad Developers <kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Monday, May 6, 2013 6:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] About MCAD integration
> 
> On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 08:31:27AM +0200, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
>>  *If* the target is only exporting the board outline with holes and maybe
>>  the component extrusion (the equivalent of IDF3), it can be feasible
>>  even in house. In the boundary representation mode for 'simple' 
> thing
>>  by face/edge/vertex it's no more difficult than, say, a 3ds file.
>>  I tried adding a hole and it only added an edge (from a cylindrical
>>  surface, directly from origin/radius/length!). However anything more
>>  would be a *huge* work.
> 
> I forgot one thing: any sane thing loading a STEP file should also
> have no problem in loading an IGES file (I am not saying that IGES is
> trivial, but at least these are 'only' 640 freely available pages).
> 
> AFAIK IGES is *not* deprecated in any way, could be a good compromise.
> 


Many workshops still accept only IGES format for files and not STEP; it really depends on what software tools the shop has.  I still think implementing this is a big job even if 640 isn't so bad ... that's about how many pages you need to master to start writing USB client code.

- Cirilo