KiCad 8.0 interoperability with other EDA tools. Next conquering object may be Allegro/OrCad?

[huskier]

Accroding to the talk of Wayne Stambaugh at FOSDEM2024, I have updated the table of KiCad (Version 8) interoperability with other EDA tools. Here are the original and the updated tables.

The original one at FOSDEM2024:

The updated one:

Actually, P-CAD and Solidworks PCB had gone with the wind! There may be not many legacy files there.

KiCad is on the way to attracting designers from other EDA tools!

One thing I am not sure is whether KiCad could import the schematic, symbols and footprints of Solidworks PCB?

[Qbort]

For now only the PCB but if you have example files, it might not be too difficult to implement. The file format of SOLIDWORKS PCB is pretty much the same as Altium with only different folder names.

[huskier]

Since P-CAD and Solidworks PCB are all end-of-life, their support may be droped someday.

There should be two tables:
one for “KiCad imports other EDA’s designs”;
the other one for “Other EDA tools import KiCad’s designs”.

[marekr]

Nope, support was added because of that

The format is identical to altium with just renamed parts, it’s unlikely to be dropped as long as altium is supported.

We just need samples of schematics.

[huskier]

@marekr

Nope, support was added because of that

OK, that’s the reason.

I put some "Never"s in the table, for I think they may be not neccesary to implement the Netlist exporting.

[dsa-t]

Solidworks PCB uses the exact Altium schematic format, last time I looked at GitHub.

[huskier]

I have attatched an official Solidworks PCB datasheet from Solidworks’ official website, in which it is emphasized that the Solidworks PCB is powered by Altium.
3DS-2017-SWK-Launch2018-DataSheet-PCB-USLetter.pdf (212.6 KB)

I think that there may be some trivial file formats differences between Solidworks PCB and Altium Designer, but there are no big differences. Therefore, the code in KiCad worked for Altium Designer importing may just works for Solidworks PCB importing.

So, I’ve changed the above table for Solidworks PCB.

[pointhi]

@huskier

I think that there may be some trivial file formats differences between Solidworks PCB and Altium Designer, but there are no big differences. Therefore, the code in KiCad worked for Altium Designer importing may just works for Solidworks PCB importing.

No “may just works”, it is already implemented and working. pcbnew/pcb_io/altium/pcb_io_solidworks.cpp · master · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab

If something is missing it is likely due to some missing mapping between the stream names which is easily fixable with an example showing the problem. To my knowledge only the PCB file differs in their format across different Altium products.

And please don’t copy-paste AI answers here. They are just a collection of words which may or may not be correct, independently at how elaborate the answer is. Especially for things which are not common knowledge found in the internet they easily start to halizunate.

[marekr]

@huskier

Microsoft Copilot, Claude 3 and Perplexity have given not useful responses, even negative reponses, while Google Gemini have given the expected answer, which I directly pasted here.

Please don’t use bullshit from AI.

The file formats for Solidworks and Altium are not publically documented. KiCad has had various developers spend time reverse engineering from scratch.

The response is 10000% a lie, even from Gemini.

You are not contributing anything useful here and contributing to the downfall of society.

[davidsrsb]

Calm down here.
But I agree that LLM AI is a very unreliable source. Only the Altium developers know if there are any hidden incompatibilities, either by accident or design. And I doubt that they will tell us.

[huskier]

I am sorry to bother some of you because of the LLM’s response text, and I’ve deleted it completely from the above thread.

The updated table for KiCad 8.0 interoperability with other EDA tools. I put here for clarity.

[RaptorUK]

@huskier

The updated table for KiCad 8.0 interoperability with other EDA tools. I put here for clarity.

Which of these where there is a Green dot have you personally tried and had full Green 100% success with ?

[huskier]

@RaptorUK

Which of these where there is a Green dot have you personally tried and had full Green 100% success with ?

I personally only have tried successfully to import Altium Designer’s schematic. For others, the information is most directly from the KiCadV8’s importing dialogs, and part (Solidworks PCB’s schematic, symbol and footprint) from Wayne Stambaugh’s slide.

[RaptorUK]

I’ve imported from Solidworks PCB and wouldn’t characterise that import as green, don’t get me wrong, it’s a huge help and a great technical achievement to do it without any help from Altium.

I’ve only done one board so far and that took a lot of work to get it to a point where it was ready for production (after making some mods) . . . but thanks to KiCad we were able to do it.

If I ever get some spare time I plan to pull some more Solidworks boards into KiCad so I can give further feedback/bug reports.

[chris9]

here in Germany one usual competitor for eagle and KiCad was/is “TARGET”. I used early versions myself before switching to LINUX.

I dont know if TARGET is an interesting target to draw new KiCad users as it is a local product ?

I also don t know anything about the file format and I have no win anymore but they offered a reduced freeware and maybe someone who knows more about SW-development than me (that means nearly everybody) will give it a try to analyze ?

[davidsrsb]

I suggest creating a trivial Target (I have heard of them) project and posting the files and screenshots of the schematic and PCB here. This should be enough to see if the files are readable. Look for save and export options that are more portable

[ChrisJC]

Sorry for being dense here, but I am looking for an answer to ‘Can Altium import a schematic from KiCAD 8’ ?

It looks from the table above that KiCAD 8 can import from Altium, but what about the other way around?

Thanks,

Chris.

[eelik]

ChrisJC, does this answer your question?

Can I export or convert a KiCad project to another EDA format (Altium, Mentor, Zuken, OrCAD etc.)?

No, KiCad doesn’t natively export to other formats for other EDA software packages, at least for the time being. There are at least two practical reasons for that. First, most commercial EDA file formats are closed, i.e. secret. It’s very difficult and time consuming to reverse engineer such a format. (This is a problem for all kinds of software, not just KiCad or EDA.) Second, the development resources must be focused into areas which are the most important for KiCad project. The resources …

[ChrisJC]

Not quite. I wouldn’t expect KiCAD to export to a different format, but I believe that Altium will import KiCAD 6.0 schematics (but not 7.0 or 8.0). I’m not sure who provided that import facility, either KiCAD community or Altium?

So it’s still a table of ‘what other CAD tools can import KiCAD schematics’ that I’m looking for I think…

Does that make sense?

Thanks,

Chris.

[eelik]

Well, the FAQ article answers the question. The KiCad project or developers don’t have resources (or willingness, for that matter, I guess) to create and give a KiCad importer to another EDA package. Maybe if they would pay really good money. The KiCad format importers in Altium etc. are made by those EDA companies, they have nothing to do with the KiCad project.