Possible Incompatibility with AutoCAD??
[quote=“PCB_Wiz, post:9, topic:2885”]
I do not have an immediate need, but I see others asking so I presume they want to either harvest KiCad footprints . . . . [/quote]
I guess I am “harvesting footprints”. I’m working with a mechanical guy to position circuit boards, connectors, LED’s, etc, within an enclosure. We are neo-Luddites, doing most of our day-to-day mechanical CAD work in 2-D tools - specifically, AutoCAD. (I don’t know the version, but it’s fairly recent.) We also use the paleolithic technique of paper cutouts to create mock-ups, verify fits, assess the visual impact of design concepts, etc.
I used the DXF Export tool from @maui to pull layers out of my KiCAD project and create *.DXF files. I then used LibreCAD to pick off particular features and information, saved the results in a *.DXF file, and sent the files to the mechanical guy.
AutoCAD can not open the *.DXF files, neither the version exported directly from KiCAD (using @maui’s tool) nor the version saved from LibreCAD. We tried saving in other versions of *.DXF (available in LibreCAD) without success. We tried some file recovery tools in AutoCAD, without success.
Has anybody else experienced this incompatibility? Any hints or suggestions?
I should mention that all of these *.DXF files open without problems in LibreCAD, and also CADStd, and also Adobe Illustrator, and can be imported back into KiCAD . . . . so I suspect that AutoCAD is being picky about something in the files but I don’t know where to begin looking for the incompatibility.
Dale
(Note to moderators: If this is unacceptable necromancy of a deceased thread, spank my typing finger and move it to a new thread. In my opinion, the post fits here because it refers specifically to the tool created by @maui .)