kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Andrew Zonenberg <azonenberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Kicad's DXF export seems to be broken, causing many tools (such as the
Sonnet field solver) to not import layouts correctly.
I contacted Sonnet support and they did some digging; it seems like
KiCAD is producing malformed DXFs that have non-closed polygons in them.

I've also encountered two other problems getting KiCAD designs into Sonnet:

1) Sonnet's DXF import expects a *single* DXF, with one drawing layer
per PCB/via layer. KiCAD generates one DXF per layer and I don't think
there is currently a way to do a multilayer export. This isn't a fatal
problem as I can just do multiple imports, but it's annoying.

2) More seriously, There does not seem to be any way to get via drill
*outlines* in DXF format. The "drill map" file just has an X at each via
location which is useless when trying to import layout into an external
tool.

Anybody have suggestions on how to proceed, or interested in helping to
fix this? I'm not super familiar with the DXF file format although back
in the v4.x days I did do some work on the microvia/blind via Excellon
drill export code so I've done at least a little bit of work there.

Andrew