Hello,
I’m looking for a way to import Altium PCBDoc and convert it into Gerber files automatically without user UI interaction.
Is it possible to achieve this at the moment?
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I also need an answer.
If you look through the command line tool documentation (KiCad Command-Line Interface | 8.0 | English | Documentation | KiCad) you’ll see that it is mostly focused on export. If this is something that is important to you, you could create a feature request for it. The easiest way to do so is open KiCad, go to About KiCad and select Report a bug. That will open your browser to the Gitlab issues page with the template partially filled out.
I will say that I personally would be nervous about trusting any import system without user intervention. While KiCad has impressive accuracy in importing supported files (generally), any import/conversion will never be perfect and could include subtle errors that DRC may or may not catch.
I would not trust it either, but when you are transitioning to KiCad and have several hundred projects in your old software, then batch converting them is a time saving step. Each project would still need review, and I admit, this review takes much more time then the import itself, but still it is a logical thing to want to have.
Something else I am missing is matching schematic symbols with footprints. From what I know, KiCad imports separate schematics and PCB files, and fixing these links automatically during the conversion could be either convenient, or dangerous.
But my stance is that I like more automation in this regard. I don’t trust it, but as long as the originals are safely backed up, faults that happened during automated steps can be redone manually. So it’s still beneficial if manual repair has only be done for a minority of the projects.