X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-UW-Orig-Sender: fpm AT homer03 DOT u DOT washington DOT edu Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:03:11 -0700 (PDT) From: Frank Miles To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: [geda-user] pcb alternatives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: User-Agent: Alpine 2.01 (LRH 1217 2009-02-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-PMX-Version: 6.1.0.2415318, Antispam-Engine: 2.7.2.2107409, Antispam-Data: 2015.3.17.155422 X-PMX-Server: mxout24.cac.washington.edu X-Uwash-Spam: Gauge=X, Probability=10%, Report=' TO_IN_SUBJECT 0.5, HTML_00_01 0.05, HTML_00_10 0.05, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS 0, BODY_SIZE_2000_2999 0, BODY_SIZE_5000_LESS 0, BODY_SIZE_7000_LESS 0, ECARD_KNOWN_DOMAINS 0, REFERENCES 0, URI_ENDS_IN_HTML 0, __ANY_URI 0, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ 0, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT 0, __CP_URI_IN_BODY 0, __CT 0, __CT_TEXT_PLAIN 0, __HAS_FROM 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __IN_REP_TO 0, __MIME_TEXT_ONLY 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __REFERENCES 0, __SANE_MSGID 0, __SUBJ_ALPHA_NEGATE 0, __TO_IN_SUBJECT 0, __TO_MALFORMED_2 0, __TO_NO_NAME 0, __URI_NO_MAILTO 0, __URI_NS , __USER_AGENT 0' Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Tue, 17 Mar 2015, ????????? ?????? wrote: > Hello, now I'm trying gEDA and I like it, but I absolutely can't understand PCB, is another script like gsch2pcb to convert my schemes for something else > like pcbnew from kicad? While in the distant past I had some success with PCB, more recently my attempted use was a failure. I had the proper netlist (from gschem), and part shapes; but I couldn't use PCB's schematic import function due to some post-schematic customizations. For reasons I couldn't determine, the netlist import was only partly successful and I was unable to fix the problem - seeming locked up in a bad state. I went through several tutorials, trying to determine what magical key sequence was necessary to continue past the block, but to no avail. {This is with the PCB from debian/testing} So while I was predisposed to PCB, I tried kicad. There's an amazing demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHDAHpR5Ls that convinced me that I should try it. At this point I've only done one board with it, and while it definitely has its quirks and limitations, I was able to resolve the issues that I ran into. This was made easier by having generated custom footprints using some code that could produce either PCB or Kicad footprints from one source: http://dlharmon.com/geda/footgen.html . I have a custom netlist generator that produces kicad-compatible netlists from my gschem schematics. It's part of a larger bit of software that would be completely impractical for anyone else to run, so I've been thinking of writing a scheme backend for gnetlist so others could try kicad's 'pcbnew'. After all, kicad is GPLv2 - and gnetlist can produce netlists for Eagle and many other non-GPL board layout packages. Would this seem the act of some kind of traitor? {BTW - Kicad doesn't seem quite as open as they might about netlist formats; but if you install their schematic package it's easy to see that one of their accepted formats is essentially the same as the very old OrCAD pcb netlist format, with a truncated header block}