Hi ,
I’m new here so first thanks to the developers for their great software.I use kicad occasionally. I have been developing a web based schematic tool. It is on git hub but I’m not here to advertise just to ask a question.In writing my program I would like to export to kicad format. I think there are benefits to both programs this way. my program is created to allow easy sharing and simulation, while kicad is used for finished design documentation and pcb design. My program uses svg so it is easy to convert to kicads vector format. The problem is the parts don’t match. if you have a schematic and the libraries are different then the connections in the diagram are wrong. I could either export all my parts into a kicad library or create parts for my program from kicad parts. I’m not trying to criticize but really trying to be helpful when I make this suggestion.
Why doesn’t kicad store the parts inside each diagram instead of referencing libraries?
And I guess I would also like to ask how I can export in kicad without using all the same libraries?
KiCAD is basically saving the references to the parts instead of each part again and again in all the schematics because this is good and practical object oriented data handling. It avoids saving data redundantly and it allows to update a part one time and have it updated everywhere without the need to update this part again and again in all the schematics that use it.
Still - I am not sure if a part in a schematics automatically get updated when opening the schematic. At least in the PCB editor this is not the case for the footprints and it seems that a copy is somehow stored in the pcb-file. To update the footprints from the library one needs to explicitly start the update process.
i think KiCAD stores all information within the project.
that means: the references to the source and a copy of the data itself.
that makes sens - if you want to share your project you don’t know what the library of your recipient is…
and second thing is - if you change your lib -
you do not want to break your old designs.
Eeschema has a ‘PRJNAME-cache.lib’ file.
there it stores a copy of the symbols used.
i think something similar is true for PCBnew:
there the footprints are stored in the ‘PRJNAME.kicad_pcb’
so back to your original questions:
most usufull would be if you ‘just’ write a converter that can read and write your svg format and convert this (read and write) to the KiCAD Symbol and Footprint (pretty) format.
i don’t know where the official documents for the file-formats are - or if there are some…
there was a similar question regarding this in the yahoo group.
Thanks, I had not thought of that.I will have to allow the user to download 2 files somehow but it will work.
Here is the specification I had found. I also have a pdf but it doesn’t contain much more information. The mailing list was hard to join so I’m glad there was this forum.