I have designed file in OrCAD & unable to import it in KiCAD & I see there is no option to import KiCAD files to OrCAD. How can this be done.
The only possible way i know is to import Orcad in Altium and then From Altium to KiCad.
Some work towards a direct importer is running in the background but nothing yet usable AFAIK.
Converting via altium probably works if altium can import orcad projects.
You could always ask on a forum if someone with a license for that program can do it for you.
There are probably also commercial companies which do such conversions for a fee. There are even companies specialized in reverse engineering PCB’s. You send them a PCB, they peel it off layer by layer and create gerber files. And apparently the fee is only a few hundred EUR.
And you always have the option to reverse engineer a KiCad PCB from gerber files.
The process is not flawless, but it’s a lot better then “nothing”.
You might be able to go via EasyEDA . . . import from OrCAD, export to Altium then import to KiCad.
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if the board is complex with many layers, then converting to a kicad is a bad solution, there are a lot of errors in it, and not typical and not immediately noticeable … one of the errors is incorrect layers during conversion, since the kikad does not understand all the layers from altium … and it’s all very easy to rake it is difficult if at all possible without errors … in the opposite direction from kickads to altium there are no such problems …
Or you can get an evaluation licence from Altium.
At least with OrCAD 16.6 the import gives reasonable results, some cleanup needed but is doable.
I recentrly converted to Altium 20+ years of OrCAD designs in a long week marathon and i’m progressively converting all the stuff to KiCad with dblibs…
I’ll give it a try. maybe it’s working better with hierarchies than the other way…
The path via Gerbers should be pretty perfect, for at least the copper on the PCB, and that is90% of what really matters. As described in the FAQ article I wrote, footprint information is lost in the gerber files and can therefore not be recovered, but replacing the left overs of the old pads wit native KiCad footprints is a quite easy step.
And because the netlist is implicitly poured into the copper layers, discrepancies between a (converted or re-entered) schematic will be caught by DRC, and can then be fixed manually.
Though reverse engineering the Gerber files is doable and a valid method, direct conversions can be better.
Apart from import via Altium there isn’t any other option ?.
Yes, did you try the EasyEDA option I mentioned above ?
Huh?
I already mentioned two other options. Do the PCB via gerbers, or outsource it and let someone else figure out the details.
KiCad can also import from several other formats, so if yo can convert it to any of those other formats it’s also an option.
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