If you’ve tried using FreeCad to make simple Line Drawings for things such as a DXF for the board shape, you know there are no useful plugins to do it (that I know of).
Many of the drawing apps that are quick and easy don’t export DXF and Inkscape requires ‘Pathing’ the object before saving as DXF… (easy but, just more steps to do).
Of course, you can use FreeCad’s Draft and Sketcher workbench’s to draw and dimension but, that too, is more work than is necessary… Especially if you want a printed hard-copy.
I’ve been playing with LibreCad (free Open Source) and, though it has it’s own head-scratching quirks, it natively saves the file as DXF and Imports into Kicad without problems…
Can draw/dimension on Layers and it imports into Kicad with correct scaling and dimensions.
Below screenshots (Libre and Kicad-edge-cuts layer)
Do you want to say that KiCad DXF import was recently updated to accept all LibreCAD DXFs?
2…3 years ago I have read (don’t remember where) that DXF from LibrCad to be loaded into KiCad need to be some way restricted to be simple enough. May be it was about arcs or curves needed to be replaced by set of straight sections. The information that stayed in my memory is that LibreCad just has a tool to do that so you can import to it other DXF-s, call that tool (don’t remember what it was) and then save and import to KiCad.
All I’m saying is LibreCad (2.1.3) exports DXF’s (and two other file types). I made some drawings and Kicad imported them without problems…
Screenshot below are the only file types it saves and exports…
EDIT: Added some shapes/items (Bizers, Freehand, Arcs, Lines…), imported into Kickad, then moved into F.Cu and overlaid a Fill/pour, then (as shown in another post on making Labels and Logos) I moved the imported items out from behind the Fill/Pour to expose the results. Should have set the line thickness thicker but, you get the idea…
DXF support has been slowly expanded in KiCad. So support for curves is there. I also made further enhancements to properly import more complex drawings like full featured suites like SolidWorks which previously poorly imported due to lack of proper BLOCK support and inability to handle coordinate space conversion
I was curious to see how DXF’s compare - mostly with respect to:
• General use for graphic items in Kicad
• Usage for Text, Images (logo’s) and Labels on Cu layer
Observations/Summary:
FreeCad, Inkscape and Kicad exported Text DXF’s with Outline’s. LibreCad exported Text as a unified/filled item (no outlines)
The first three were very usable for Text in a Cu Fill/Pour.
The LibreCad Text DXF’s were handled differently by Kicad, thus, results are not similar.
Note: LibreCad does have an “Explode Text To Letters” feature but, I haven’t yet mastered it’s use for Cu Labels in Kicad… Thus, TBD.
Image below shows the Text used for each Cu pour label and results (after moving the text from behind the Cu Fill/Pour).
Note: I did Not tweak the Offsets for best font-image clarity in the fill panel but, that’s a minor detail to dial-in for the Label’s Text size.
I have spent enough time with LibreCad to say, it’s simple and perfect for making graphics for use in Kicad (versus FreeCad and Inkscape). It also exports Icons (ico and icns), and the usual other Image formats… The Layers and Blocks seem to work well, too.
