kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/22/2013 7:31 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> The new footprint library table code is pretty much ready for testing.
> I need some brave volunteers to help out with the testing just in case I
> missed something and I always do.  Build KiCad with the CMake flag
> -DUSE_FP_LIB_TABLE=ON.  I committed the documentation for CvPcb so you
> should be able to figure it out.  If you get stuck, let me know and I'll
> try to answer any questions as soon as I can.  It's really not all that
> difficult.  Please make a back up of your files before you start
> replacing the footprint names with the new footprint ID format because
> they will not work with the old footprint library look up method.
> 
> I'm most interested in how well the automatic conversion tool works in
> CvPcb.  It worked very well with most of the KiCad demo projects with
> the exception of a few libraries whose file names must have changed at
> some point.  When you open a netlist with the current footprint names,
> CvPcb will ask you if you want to automatically convert them to the new
> footprint ID format.  If you decline to use the automatic conversion,
> all of the footprint assignments will be cleared and you will have to
> reassign them manually.  Also test back annotating the schematic so the
> component footprint fields get populated with the new footprint ID and
> then regenerate the netlist using the new s-expression format.  You
> should be able to import the new netlist with exchange modules enable
> and the footprints on your board should not change unless you modified
> them after they were loaded into the board.
> 
> There is one caveat.  Something is broken with the KiCad Pretty
> (s-expression footprint files) file parser.  It appears to be an issue
> with the layer parser changes.  Hopefully I can get it fixed sometime
> this week.  I just ran out of time today. Other than that the footprint
> viewer and editor can seamlessly use KiCad Legacy (.mod), Eagle (XML
> format), and Geda footprint libraries.

The Pretty file parser is working fine.  I had some old pretty footprint
files in my library with the previous layer definitions that didn't get
updated because they no longer exist in the library that I converted
them from.  Obviously, this brings up another issue but I'll take a look
at that some other time.  This means you can add KiCad pretty footprint
libraries to the list.

> 
> Once the KiCad Pretty library parser is fixed, the only other thing I
> need to do is finish up the documentation for Pcbnew and Eeschema.  Many
> thanks in advance for help testing.
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Wayne
>