kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo_bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: KiCad Developers <kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Monday, September 23, 2013 10:50 AM
> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] Footprint library table testing.
> 
> 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
>> 
> 
> 



Great work Wayne;  I'll play around with this in the next few days and let you know how things go.

- Cirilo