Help with FreeCAD StepUp - Microwave Layouts

Layout Footprints
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I have an ADS momentum design for a Wilkinson splitter and wish to turn it into a copper zone on my board. I don’t want to import artwork and manually draw it because it will introduce possibly detrimental errors with the loss in precision.

I have been playing around with the KiCADStepUp tool in FreeCAD, but I can’t get anything usable. I’ve been trying for hours. Please help!

The Antenna example is great and all I’d need; however, there is very little documentation nor a step by step procedure that isn’t either extremely outdated or incorrect. Do you have to name the sketch something specific for it to work when converting to kicad footprint? When I name it Pads_Poly after converting the dxf into a sketch I get the following error:

15:55:19 PoM not present
15:55:19 using ‘Part’ container and ‘Links’
15:55:19 FC Version 019-24291
15:55:19 kicad StepUp version 10.1.7.0
15:55:19 tolerance on vertex applied
15:55:19 applying Materials to Shapes
15:55:19 your home path is /Users/michaeleller
15:55:19 export to STEP False
15:55:19 Tabified done !
15:55:19 done!
15:55:19 need to discretize Arcs
15:55:19 need to discretize Arcs
15:55:19 need to discretize Arcs
15:55:19 need to discretize Arcs
15:55:19 Running the Python command ‘ksuToolsFootprintGen’ failed:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/Users/michaeleller/Library/Preferences/FreeCAD/Mod/kicadStepUpMod/kicadStepUpCMD.py”, line 2114, in Activated
kicadStepUptools.PushFootprint()
File “/Users/michaeleller/Library/Preferences/FreeCAD/Mod/kicadStepUpMod/kicadStepUptools.py”, line 16217, in PushFootprint
sk_d=Draft.makeSketch([wns,wnc[0]], autoconstraints=True)

list index out of range

I just need to turn a complex shape from a dxf into a copper zone – doesn’t even need to be a footprint necessarily.

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image
image1086×866 9 KB

Here is the general artwork shape

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OK. FYI:

You can export the artwork from ADS as a gerber plot, open with kicad’s gerbview, and export to new PCB.

That’s what I’m going with for now.

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would you mind to post the dxf file?

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Looks like I’m a “new user” and can’t upload files :frowning:

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@hermit or some admin could help @mbe9a in ‘new user’ profile?

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wilkinson_raw_ads.dxf (166.4 KB)
wilkinson.dxf (87.6 KB)

The second file was cleaned up a bit in AutoCAD 2022.

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Hi @mbe9a
I’ve started from the cleaned file…
In FC I had to convert it to a sketch, because it seems the edges were not oriented on the same versus… then I could apply the process to create a poly pad footprint…
(I know I would need to build some doc)

here the FC file and kicad footprint
wilk-fp.FCStd (63.4 KB)
wilk-fp.kicad_mod (8.1 KB)

image
image1198×813 32 KB

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Testing something here. @moderators

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Sadly, no. System recognizes this group but doesn’t seem to alert. :frowning:
@ChrisGammell Anything in the back end that might fix this?

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Amazing! Thanks! I have a bunch of designs to do, could you share the steps you took to do this when you get a chance?

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That group exists but only people in the group can message it so that we’re not being summoned like genies :smiley:

mbe9a did the right thing and stuck around on the forum for about 20 minutes to move up from a level zero user to a level 1 user.

This post explains more: https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-trust-levels/

The good parts:

[A user can] get to trust level 1 by…

  • Entering at least 5 topics
  • Reading at least 30 posts
  • Spend a total of 10 minutes reading posts
2 Likes
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Unfortunately I have little documentation written, apart the one at the forum…
https://forum.kicad.info/search?q=StepUp RF
I asked few times to have some user in helping me to write some doc, but at the end when their job was done, the interest went away…

I haven’t any RF generator software, so it is quite difficult for me to imagine a path to be written in a doc

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Maybe this post will help:

or here with another part of the StepUp tool (just keep reading :wink: ):

1 Like
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