kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 02:57:48AM -0700, Cirilo Bernardo wrote:
> 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.

640 pages contains *all* the entities... since we only need to export
a few of them: who needs for pcbnew Conic Arcs, Copious Data Entities
(whatever *things* they are), Centerlines, Splines, Toruses etc... it
wouldn't be trivial either, depending on how much data has to be
processed before outputting (example: holes in the board surface are to
be represented tessellating the board or simply subtracting cylinders?
is a winding order mandated?). Looking from the TOC only about 10
entities would be needed.

Of the proposed formats IDF3 is the easier to export, IGES is more
difficult but doable, STEP would need a *lot* of reverse engineering
before being able to do useful stuff.

Before any of them would be useful anyway to decide: a) how to mark the
'important' holes and b) how to decide how high is stuff (included the
compiled in 1,6mm of board default)

-- 
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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