From: "W. Ekkehard Blanz" <ekkehard DOT blanz AT gmail DOT com>
To: geda-help AT delorie DOT com
Subject: [geda-help] (x)gsch2pcb produces empty layout in pcb
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:36:49 -0700
Message-ID: <3784557.6vK0GqeGTq@gandalf>
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Reply-To: geda-help AT delorie DOT com

...just installed and used gEDA tools for the first time (NOOB!!)...

I used the schematic editor gschem with great success.  Footprints were a bit 
of a headache though, and I used a wild mix of m4, usr/share/pcb/pcblib-
newlib/geda files (these had a nice index.html so I could search them) and some 
files that I had to create myself from files found in usr/share/pcb/pcblib-
newlib/geda as templates, which I stuck in a library directory in my $HOME 
directory tree.

I used a "project" file, which I made sure had an elements-dir directive in it, 
pointing to my own footprints directory.  I also stuck a gafrc in ~/.gEDA with 
a component-library directive pointing to my footprints directory as well.

xgsch2pcb threw me into pcb after clicking on "Update Layout", but the layout 
was empty - the pcb file contained none of my elements, just the whole ASCII 
table as "symbols".  So I must have been doing something wrong :-(.  But 
what??

Then I tried File->Import Schematics, which imported some of my footprints, 
but none of the m4, and more severely, none of my own footprints (the m4 I 
could have worked around using the usr/share/pcb/pcblib-newlib/geda files 
instead).

Since xgsch2pcb produced no error messages or logs neither in var/log/syslog 
nor in ~/.gEDA/logs, I tried the CLI version of it, hoping to gain more 
insight from any error messages it might produce.  Here is its output:

$ gsch2pcb SignalTester.gsch2pcb 
Found a cpinlist head with a netname! [V+]
Found a cpinlist head with a netname! [V+]
Found a cpinlist head with a netname! [V+]
=====================================================
gsch2pcb backend configuration:

   ----------------------------------------
   Variables which may be changed in gafrc:
   ----------------------------------------
   gsch2pcb:pcb-m4-command:    /usr/bin/m4
   gsch2pcb:pcb-m4-dir:        /usr/share/pcb/m4
   gsch2pcb:pcb-m4-confdir:    /etc/pcb
   gsch2pcb:pcb-m4-path:       /usr/share/pcb/m4  /etc/pcb  $HOME/.pcb  .
   gsch2pcb:m4-command-line:   /usr/bin/m4 -d  -I/usr/share/pcb/m4 -I/etc/pcb 
-I$HOME/.pcb -I. /usr/share/pcb/m4/common.m4 - >> SignalTester.pcb

   ---------------------------------------------------
   Variables which may be changed in the project file:
   ---------------------------------------------------
   gsch2pcb:use-m4:            yes

=====================================================
Using the m4 processor for pcb footprints

----------------------------------
Done processing.  Work performed:
1 file elements and 26 m4 elements added to SignalTester.pcb.

Next step:
1.  Run pcb on your file SignalTester.pcb.
    You will find all your footprints in a bundle ready for you to place
    or disperse with "Select -> Disperse all elements" in PCB.

2.  From within PCB, select "File -> Load netlist file" and select 
    SignalTester.net to load the netlist.

3.  From within PCB, enter

           :ExecuteFile(SignalTester.cmd)

    to propagate the pin names of all footprints to the layout.

~/X10/SignalTester/eda 
$ 

This time, the pcb file contained ALL of my elements (including m4 and my own), 
all of the ASCII table "symbols" were gone, but running pcb on it still showed 
me an empty layout.  BTW, importing the schematics manually did the same thing 
as above: left out all the m4 components and my own.

So now I am even more confused.  There is a difference between xgsch2pcb and 
gsch2pcb, which I don't understand, and more importantly, even though the pcb 
file now contains ALL of my footprints, the layout still shows empty in pcb.  I 
must have a major gap in my understanding of how it should all work....

Can any of you gEDA gurus help, please?

Thanks in advance!!!

Ekkehard

P.S.  This is what I run:

Kubuntu 11.10 64 bit with KDE 4.7.4 on an AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor
with my distro's gEDA tools, i.e."

gEDA/gschem version 1.6.2.20110115
xgsch2pcb 0.1.3
gsch2pcb 1.6
pcb version 20100929
don't know how to get the version number of gnetlist that I am running - it 
has no -V option