Import from Altium - problem with text

[s2x3]

Dear all

I noticed that when PCB is imported from Altium to Kicad 8, all the text is shifted a little bit, see two screenshots below, first is Altium, second is Kicad. Only text is shifted in vertical direction, but not graphics from footprint. Is it known problem? Can it be avoided with some special settings either in Altium or in Kicad (e.g. choose some particular font or apply certain alignment) ?

Thank you in advance
Cheers, Sanya

[hmk]

I suspect that this would be an issue worth reporting as an issue in gitlab (“bug report”). Usually what you have written here + the original Altium project + the resulting KiCad project + version information is a good start

But it might be a good thing if you first added the version info of KiCad here. There has been quite some development on the import from Altium in KiCad, so this might behave differently in newer compared to older versions.
For version info see: Menu Help → About KiCad → Copy version info

Often some developers read here on the forum too, and perhaps they can give a few good advices for making a report in gitlab too, but in the end gitlab is the place where it should end up if it is a problem in the code. The forum is a good first check if you want some verification that other users have the same problem, discuss if it is a bug or other problem etc. Just as general information from my experience…

[s2x3]

I think there is only one Kicad version 8 for the moment

Application: KiCad PCB Editor x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 8.0.0, release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.4
FreeType 2.13.2
HarfBuzz 8.1.1
FontConfig 2.15.0
libcurl/8.5.0-DEV OpenSSL/3.1.5 zlib/1.3.1 nghttp2/1.58.0

Platform: Freedesktop SDK 23.08 (Flatpak runtime), 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, plasma, x11

Build Info:
Date: Feb 23 2024 23:25:22
wxWidgets: 3.2.4 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.84.0
OCC: 7.7.2
Curl: 8.5.0-DEV
ngspice: 42
Compiler: GCC 13.2.0 with C++ ABI 1018

[paulvdh]

It looks like a small non-ideality and it may be worth creating an issue for it on gitlab (If it does not exist yet). But as a workaround, it is also easy to change in KiCad.

1. Set the selection filter in the lower right corner to only select text.
2. Draw a box around the PCB to select all text.
3. Right click and select: Position Tools / Move Exactly from the popup menu.
4. Enter a small value (such as 0.3mm) for the Move Y: box.

[s2x3]

Thanks for the hint! I’ve made global shift and now all text look good
In my particular case text had to be moved by (-0.139, 0.214) because I see that in Altium text box has exact size of the containing text, while in Kicad I see some distance from lower left corner of letter R to the place where Kicad is supposed to start writing the text

I think shift appears because in Altium coordinate of the text is the center of text box, while in Kicad it’s recalculated to the lower left corner and visible shift occurs because letter glyph has some empty space around the letter itself, so lower left corner of the glyph and true lower left corner of the letter is not the same thing. While for center it’s different story - center or the glyph is usually center of the letter

I guess import would work better if coordinates of the center of the text box are kept unchanged and text alignment option is set to “center-middle”

[hmk]

Just for a little background why it is in most cases not enough to just say “KiCad 8”:

1. there are many different builds of version 8, depending on if it is the main 8.0.0 release, a release candidate (built daily for a couple weeks), a daily testing build for 8.0.1 or the 8.0.1 release candidate(s).

2. The version information you have now pasted here, gives information not only on the exact build, but also on the libraries and platform / OS.

In this case 1) may be important, perhaps it is slightly less likely that the OS or libraries would make a difference, but it is not uncommon in general for bugs to be platform dependent.