However to call KiCAD’s support for EDA file formats in general “excellent” feels disingenuous. I don’t expect parity, I’m aware of the challenges and appreciate both the complexity and even the difficulty of getting hold of these files in the first place for reverse engineering. Blender has done an excellent job of supporting otherwise proprietary formats originally developed for and used by software with a median cost in excess of $1000USD (if not that price per year in some cases). Sometimes even better than the original tools for the formats were. I’ll compare it to Blender, where the support for all but the most ludicrously esoteric formats has been developed and in many cases is still maintained. And KiCAD has little support for many of them.įor instance I most recently came across OrCAD, yet another EDA tool I have never even heard about it before, it’s proprietary format locking away design information and thus requiring tedious and error prone reconstruction of what is otherwise a completely open design. There are dozens of poorly documented EDA project formats and unfortunately they are usually associated with expensive software. It needs a LOT of long term work to expand this capabilities. I think it makes more sense to make a review of KiCad and make a list of pro’s and cons and then decide if it is suitable for what you want to do with it.KiCAD has good compatibility with a very small number of file formats. How does that compare with the recurring costs of Altium? “Uconfig” seens to be specifically written for KiCad.Īnother one uses “Tabula” with a bit of custom python to aid in the conversion:Ĭonverting your libraries is also a one-time thing. pdf files.īrings up several possibilities. pdf format and there are tools to help in KiCad with extracting data for schematic symbols from. Something like the above would need some way of communicating your existing library to someone else, and one of the ways to do that is by printing all library symbols to a. If you don’t want to spend much time converting your own altium libraries to KiCad (it’s pretty boring work), then maybe you can use the cost of a single year of Altium use as a budget to hire someone to do the conversion for you.
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