Help importing PCB from Altium into KiCad v8.0.5

Software
1

Hey guys,

First time KiCad user here.

I am trying to do an import from an Altium PCB into v8.0.5. It imports successfully, with a few messages about missing layers, eg:

KiCad layer Eco1_User. Altium layer (71) has no KiCad equivalent. It has been moved to KiCad layer Eco1_User. Altium layer (71) has no KiCad equivalent. It has been moved to KiCad layer Eco1_User. Altium layer (72) has no KiCad equivalent. It has been moved to KiCad layer Eco1_User. Altium layer (72) has no KiCad equivalent. It has been moved to

The problems though are:

  1. KiCad is merging some silk screen info from the bottom layer into the top.
  2. The text position and size of top layer silk screen elements is wrong.

See:

image
image1059×834 83.6 KB

My question is – are there any parameters to fine tune the import process? Any tips to get a better result from the import?

Thanks!

2

Raise a bug report and give a sample Altium project if possible, that will allow the developers to fix issues they can reproduce.

3

Hi @jitteryredwing
in the nightly kicad you can select which Altium layers you want to put to which Kicad layer

this is the corresponding feature request which was implemented, but only for kicad nightly, not 8.0.x

I suggest to read the warnings, before using kicad nightly Nightly Builds and Release Candidates | KiCad EDA

4

Thanks guys. Am I really operating at the bleeding edge of KiCad just importing a simple Altium board?

5

Some things have recently changed with Altium import, yes. It’s a fairly new feature, but in its original version did not support as many things as it does today.

The two problems you mentioned are not ones that I think the team is currently aware of / working on, so it would be helpful if you could report a bug with the Altium file attached. You can mark it as confidential if needed.

The “no KiCad equivalent” messages are safe to ignore.

Actually answering your original question: No, there are no parameters to tune. The goal is to import without needing any tuning, but obviously we aren’t there yet.

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6

Maybe not but what has been done so far has been of enormous use to me and the company I work for, so thank you.

3 Likes
7

Thanks for the replies.

Unfortunately I can’t share this import file. I am happy to do testing however.

I will give kicad-nightly-8.99.0.2321.g4388df6c25-x86_64 a shot and report back :+1:

8

Unfortunately, if you report that something doesn’t work, there is nothing that can be done without a sample file.

9

Test projects to see whether features of KiCad (such as importers) work, do not have to be working schematics / PCB’s / projects. If this feature is so important to you, then it also should not be too much work to spend a bit of time to either transform a copy of your “important file” into something that you can share, or create a sample project from scratch that does expose the misbehavior you are seeing in your real project. Sometimes a project with two resistors connected together on a rectangular PCB is enough. Documentation with the project, such as screenshots (both of altium and the converted kicad project) together with some text that clarifies the missing features is an important part for reporting such an issue.

And sure, it does take some time and effort to create such test projects. But consider what KiCad is worth to you, and what a better working altium importer is worth to you. KiCad’s feature set has been growing quite rapidly lately, and it’s now getting better than other EDA suites costing hundreds or even some thousand of EURo’s, and you get it all for free. Is it too much to ask for a few hours of your time in return? You are spending that time to enable KiCad to improve on a feature that is important to you.

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10

Woah man, chill! I don’t have an Altium license, so I can not create a file that I can share. I will test with the latest nightly and report back. I am just surprised this file is so unique to break the importer.

11

You can ask Altium for a trial license → Start Designing PCBs with a Free Trial of Altium Designer| Altium

12

I gave this a shot with the 8.99.0-2321 nightly. The auto-match seems to provide a worse result, with some layers missing altogether (I did not manually create or match any layers).

Unfortunately the text size, position and layering issue is still present. Not only is the text too large (approx double size) but it is in the wrong position as per my first post images (see R1, R5). Of note is that the text imported as ‘KiCad Font’ has this issue, the text in Arial seems fine.

image
image1139×574 105 KB

At this time I do not have the capacity nor skills to replicate the problem board in Altium to submit a bug, so I can only hope I am not the only one with the problem.

Happy to do more test imports if there is a debug build with more logging etc.

13

I remember a bug report for the eagle importer concerning text rotation and positioning. It was about half a year ago and it was posted on gitlab together with a clear description and an example file and screenshots. The issue was fixed in a few weeks. But without a decent bug report, the issue is simply not going to be fixed. I don’t use importers much, so I am definitely not going to put time into this either.

14

Please at least report a bug with screenshots and clear description of the problem with text, even if you don’t share the file.

15

I attempted to import a legacy Altium file into KiCad back when KiCad was just about to move to v7. Couldn’t successfully import the schematic (multiple errors) or the PCB (complete failure). Funnily enough the reason that seemed to be the most ‘accepted’ (by the forum) was my Altium file was too OLD (importing from an Altium 6 design).

I recently had to import another project (Altium again, and Altium 6 again) using v8.0 (about a week after 8 came out), and it worked exceptionally well. I think one error in the schematic, and no errors in the PCB (although I had to rejig some of the cosmetic layers). I was damn impressed!

I expect to have to do a little fixing - although the issue then becomes “is there an error… and if so, where the hell is it…”

16

Hey all,

I was about to report that issue and decided to download 8.0.6-36-gd1684b8a72 to see if there were any improvements.

I was pleasantly surprised – I still get a layer error Altium layer (71) has no KiCad equivalent. It has been moved to KiCad layer Eco1_User. however the font size and position is correct on all labels.

I’d just like to thank everyone who replied for their help!

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