Message-ID: <1400729106.46888.YahooMailNeo@web120504.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2014 20:25:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo_bernardo AT yahoo DOT com>
Subject: [geda-user] IDF support
To: "geda-user AT delorie DOT com" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

If anyone is interested, I have a working IDFv3 parser which I hope will eventually be included in KiCad. The parser is written in C++ and can stand alone, so if anyone is interested in adding IDF support to gEda this would be a good place to start. The source code is currently available as a bzr patch against KiCad, but if anyone is interested let me know and I can repackage it as a tarball.

To implement an IDF importer simply use the code to read an IDF file, then take the data from the objects and translate them into gEda pcb's representation. To implement an exporter, simply create IDF entities from gEda's representation, add it to the IDF object, then write the IDF object. The source includes a tool which uses the IDF code to read a file, extract board and component outlines, and creates a VRML representation of the board.

The source code:
https://github.com/cbernardo/kicad-patches

Example IDF files converted to VRML (can be viewed with firefox or view3dscene):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By_XTJN-s8aXZHJnNDAxUzNBc3c/edit?usp=sharing

The IDF to VRML tool in the source allows users to visualize the IDF file before sending it off to the mechanical folks. A heavyweight alternative to viewing IDF files is to load FreeCAD, but at this point in time (in my opinion) VRML is the best visualization option.

cheers,
Cirilo