kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 9/23/2013 10:14 PM, Cirilo Bernardo wrote:
> ----- 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
> 

Thanks for the help.  Please use r4345 or later.  I found a few bugs in
new footprint plugin and one in the footprint library viewer.  I also
need to fix the Pretty footprint library conversion code.  It appends
.kicad_mod to the library path so I'll have to figure out a better way
to handle choosing the path.

Wayne