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Re: CADSTAR Importer & Pad Stacks

 

Jon,

Thanks for the advice. It will still be a while until I have something
working but yes, I will create a merge request once I have a skeleton for
the importer.

@Jeff Young - I've made you an editor of the document I made on Pad Stacks
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxBI7_X_I7pO-nuDHPRVlfRBH24XTmwuuN69o_Bqk3s/edit?usp=sharing>.
Hopefully you will have received a separate email with an editor's link.
Let me know if that wasn't the case.

Roberto

On Sun, 21 Jun 2020 at 02:51, Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Roberto,
>
> Welcome!  Thanks for pointing that out about Altium, I learn something
> new every day!
>
> I recommend that you open a merge request for your CADSTAR importer
> once it is far enough along for people to do some basic tests.  You
> can mark it as "WIP", but having the MR open early will help get early
> testing and review so that we can help get it in for V6.
>
> Regarding Pad Stacks, @Jeff Young is probably the best person to sync
> with on the lead dev team as he has recently been doing some of the
> groundwork.
>
> Best,
> Jon
>
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 9:07 PM Roberto Fernández Bautista
> <roberto.fer.bau@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm new to the mailing list. I just wanted to make you aware that I'm
> starting work on a native Zuken CADSTAR importer for KiCad. I intend to
> follow a similar approach to @pointhi in the forums for his Altium importer
> - trying to stick to similar class structure where possible. My "short"
> term plan is to provide an importer for the CADSTAR PCB archive format
> (which is an ASCII file that is based on S-expressions). Since I'm doing
> this in my free time, I expect it will take a few months but hopefully the
> PCB importer would be ready before KiCad v6 feature freeze. Once I have
> something that sort of works, I'll make a merge request and ask for further
> feedback on how to improve it.
> >
> > Now, on a second note, I'd like to provide some input on Pad Stacks. I
> joined the mailing list after the last post on the thread "How do we
> envision Pad Stacks?" (
> https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg44006.html), so I can't
> reply to that thread directly, unfortunately. However, the topic discussed
> in that thread is very relevant to the work I am trying to do with the
> CADSTAR importer (and I bet also important for the Altium importer
> @pointhi  made).
> >
> > I'd like to point out two small inaccuracies in Jon's message:
> >
> > In Altium you can define a full pad stack when editing footprints:
> Altium uses a default 14-electrical-layer board stackup which is then
> mapped to whatever layers you actually use in your design when you include
> the footprint.
> > You can define a SMD pad in an inner layer.
> >
> > Please see attached screenshots from v20.1 showing above two cases,
> maybe earlier versions didn't allow this?.  More details can be found here:
> https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/pcb-prop-padpad-properties-ad
> .
> >
> >
> > To keep this email short, I've created a document with other bits of
> information that I feel might be useful (such as how CADSTAR handles Pad
> Stacks) as well as some suggestions for Pad Stack implementation in KiCad -
> maybe this could be the start of a more complex design document?
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lxBI7_X_I7pO-nuDHPRVlfRBH24XTmwuuN69o_Bqk3s/edit?usp=sharing
> >
> > Since this mailing list is public, I have made the above link view only
> access, but if you'd like to edit, just request it.
> >
> > Please let me know what you think.
> >
> > Roberto Fernandez (Qbort)
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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