Hello,
My employer has been using Altium Designer to make PCBs for a while. We are, however, exploring the feasibility of moving away from Altium, but our entire component inventory is stored in an Altium library. Is there a way to convert Altium libraries to Kicad libraries whilst maintaining custom properties like our company’s specific part numbers?
Sure, you can even use regular/local Altium libraries (and database libraries with a little more work) in KiCad without having to convert them as long as you’re cool with read-only from the KiCad side. The import process isn’t always perfect (not all layers in Altium have a clear equivalent in KiCad) but you should definitely give it a try and see how it goes.
EDIT: Note that, in my experience, the Altium Comments field is moved to the KiCad Value field (the logical equivalent) and anything in the Altium Value field is moved to a new ALTIUM_VALUE field.
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How did you do that exactly? Adding custom fields to library symbols / footprints / parts? Something very similar can be done in KiCad, as scandey already mentioned, but switching to database driven libraries is probably a better approach. I’ve read success stories of people using a database driven libraries from other EDA suites, and re-using the whole database in KiCad. You just have to tweak the interface to work with your particular database.
With a database you can also add much more information. Ordering information from multiple vendors, compatible replacement parts, and much more. KiCad itself does not have such a database system built in. It only has an interface to connect to an external database. This gives a lot of flexibility, but also adds some extra complexity. I’d say invest some time to learn how this works and what it can do for you before you make a final decision.