X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f
X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2015 05:16:07 GMT
From: falcon AT ivan DOT Harhan DOT ORG (Spacefalcon the Outlaw)
Message-Id: <1507230516.AA05719@ivan.Harhan.ORG>
To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
Subject: [geda-user] Converting footprints from PADS to PCB
Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com

Continuing on my quest to recapture the design of a classic GSM
cellphone in a FOSS EDA format...  A few months ago the founder of
Openmoko released the original design files, including PCB layout, for
their legendary Neo Freerunner:

ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/GTA02/GTA02-MB-A6.zip

Their PCB layout was done in PADS, and we have both the original PADS
file and the full set of gerbers made from it.  I would like to reuse
a whole bunch of footprints from Openmoko's layout, as that layout
contains known good footprints for all of the core components needed
in a Calypso phone or modem.

The problem is that PADS' *.pcb files are in a proprietary binary
format. :-(  The good news is that we have the gerbers too, and one
can view them with gerbv, measure the dimensions of every aspect of
every footprint and recreate an equivalent footprint for our PCB - but
of course it would be a very tedious manual process.

I wonder, would anyone here happen to know anything about PADS' format?
Was it perchance documented in some place accessible to mere mortals?
Or if I found someone with a working installation of PADS who could
open the layout file, does PADS perchance have some way to extract
elements from a complete PCB design and save them as reusable
footprints?  Or perhaps a way to save the whole layout as ASCII instead
of binary - if it were ASCII, I could probably stare at it and figure
out the info I'm after...

Has anyone ever succeeded in moving footprints from PADS into the FOSS
EDA world, be it our PCB or KiCAD?

TIA,
SF