Defects on importing an eagle pcb

Software
1

I’m a Kicad newbie… currently used to work with eagle and trying to convert one of my projects from eagle into Kicad. At first I was amazed on the import capabilities. However looking into detail to the outcome, I see a number of defects. I wonder what the best solution would be: changing setting/libraries in Eagle or did I overlook settings in Kicad.

Issues seen using latest official stable build (2013-07-07), ranked in order of importance:

  • GND of U1 and U3 not connected to ground plane
  • VCC ground copperplane missing: looks like rank of VCC and GND plane is swapped (VCC of U2)
  • eagle polygon (isolation) properties are different (not/can not be transferred to drc rules?)
  • Arcs of board (edge) cuts are not imported:(corners)
  • Arcs/circles of component drawings (silkscreen) are not imported, see U3 and elco, (converted to straight lines)
  • Dimensions (on tDocu layer) are not imported at all
  • Newlines in text are not imported (text in upper left corner)
  • Vias connecting GND plane on top and bottom layer are not connected to any net import

Since I’m not allowed to insert pics:
an illustration of the listed issues (jpg diff eagle at bottom/kicad at top) at: http://users.telenet.be/on4nvs/images/Eagle_Kicad.jpg
original eagle board (version 6.4) file is available here: http://users.telenet.be/on4nvs/files/IRExtenderEagle.zip

2

I actually rather surprised how good the imported board is :slight_smile:

3

Sorry, but that doesn’t help the OP any further…

4

The arc problem should be fixed, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1399745

Also please add bugs on the official bug tracker, with each bulleted issue in your original post as an easily digestable seperate bug report and tag with eagle. Also provide example files, or that one might be ok. I don’t think any dev wants to look at this site for bugs.

5

Thanks to point me to the Launchpad bugs. Gonna have a look and file the bugs over there.

Nico.

6

Even though this post is really old, I just wanted to provide you an update on this:

All of the listed issues should be fixed in kicad 4.0.0.

There are still a handful of issues with graphical elements, but the importer is a lot better than it was last year!

7

@reportingsjr What are your thoughts on this eagle script for exporting to Kicad vs the new features in Kicad 4.0

8

From the demos I saw it looks like it works pretty well. Lachlan did submit a patch to kicad recently to help fix some of the import issues.

I hope that the importer can become good enough to not need those scripts. The easier it is for people to import/export the easier everyone’s life becomes!

9

For KiCad 4.0 the Eagle Import function is still for PCB board import only right?

No Eagle Schematic import is possible still right?

10

Correct. …