Hello everybody,
I would open my pcb but i have got this message :
IO_Error : La couche “dessous.adhes” dans le fichier “…kicad_pcb” ligne 19, n’est pas dans la liste des couches prédéfinies from C:\jekins/workspace/windows-kicas-msys2-stable/src/kicad-4.0.2/pcbnew/pcb_parser.cpp:parseLayers():Line 830
I don’t understand to open it…
Please read this: https://kicad.org/help/migration-from-old-stable/
DO NOT use system Notepad to edit .kicad_pcb files! Use Notepad++ or other plain text editor which can handle UTF-8 (without BOM) encoding.
Thanks @keruseykaryu for the hint.
I have a similar problem. I am using nightly build 2016-09-17 rev. 679eef1
The KiCad at the manufacturer’s site (Kicad-4.0.1) complains:
PARSE Error: Expecting
clearance, trace_width, via_dia, via_drill, uvia_dia, uvia_drill, and add_net
in input/source
My .kicad_pcb seems to be in English although I changed the language back and forth.
The parameters in my .kicad_pcb which sound closest to the missings ones are:
(trace_clearance 0.3)
(zone_clearance 0.508)
(trace_min 0.2)
(via_size 0.6)
(via_drill 0.4)
(via_min_size 0.4)
(via_min_drill 0.3)
(uvia_size 0.3)
(uvia_drill 0.1)
(uvias_allowed no)
(uvia_min_size 0.2)
(uvia_min_drill 0.1)
… and many more…
Was there a change in the name of the parameters from 4.0.1 to the most recent versions of KiCad?
How can I get the right parameter name mapping?
How to get a file which will work at the manufacturer’s site?
For the manfacture it’s best to use Gerber and Excellon NC Drill files instead of .kicad_pcb or .brd.
Export of these files in KiCad is very easy (in comparision with EAGLE or Protel/Altium) and each fab will handle this.
KiCAD isn’t backwards compatible, it breaks all the time.
Either use a standardized format that doesn’t change as often (the mentioned gerber format comes to mind) or get the manufacturer to update his KiCAD version.
thanks again @keruseykaryu and @Joan_Sparky
Actually, I already expected that the fabrication of my first PCBs will not run smoothly.
Although, I was full of hope when the manufacturer said, “well, just send us the .kicad_pcb file”. I should have asked which version… but then would have learned about the missing backwards compatibility.
It would be good if these limitations, pitfalls and recommendations can be mentioned in the “First Steps with KiCad”. Maybe they already there, but I read them over?!
To be honest broken backwards compatibility exists in nearly all software products. Try to open a current MS Word file with MS Word 95.
That is the main reason why standardized exchange formats exist. (PDF would be an example for my given analogy. Gerber is the exchange format for PCB design.)
By the way: Nightly builds are not really meant for production work. (That’s what stable releases are for.)
In the stable release it is ensured that the format does not change as fast. (You can open a file generated by 4.0.4 in 4.0.1)
There has been a thread recently where somebody asked how to open a file generated with nightly builds in the stable version but i can’t find it right now. (Maybe somebody else remembers how the title has been.)
That’s a bit extreme! MS Word 95 itself probably doesn’t even run on any recent version of Windows.
No, the main reason for standardized exchange formats is cross platform compatibility, hence the term “exchange”. It’s not about backward compatibility. Yes, PDF is a good example, works on all platforms (“Portable”) but is not backward compatible. Older readers do not read modern PDF files, and as we all know Gerber files are not backward compatible either.
MS Word and Excel, as well others, do maintain some degree of backward compatibility. When trying to open a newer version of a document with an older version of the software you often get a message something like:
“This document was created with a newer version of _____ and contains features that are not supported by this version. If you continue to open this document it may not display correctly. If you edit and save this document it will be saved in the old format and any new features will be lost.”
This at least gives you the ability to view the contents of the file and in some cases even allows you to convert it back to the old format. It would be nice if KiCAD did something similar.
Having said that, in the context of this topic, I would never send the KiCAD files to a PCB fab.
Just curious…and maybe stupid question:
Why not? What’s the risk? Reverse engineering? Plagiarism? They have the data anyway…
When sending Gerber and drill files to the fab they actually have very little information about your board. They wouldn’t know the values of any of the discreet components, or which ICs are used, etc. That is assuming you haven’t put that info on the board itself. And they are not likely to be interested enough to attempt to reverse engineer it. The KiCAD pcb file however does contain this information and although they don’t have the schematic it would be possible to generate it. A hobbyist may not be concerned about this but a company would likely be concerned about giving out the design details of their product.
Another thing is interpretation by the CAM system, at least I hope.
With gerbers, even if those aren’t back/forwards compatible between versions decades apart, that format should be a lot more stable and focused at the job at hand compared to a kicad project folder zipped up.
The gerbers contain only the needed information to actually make the board, the kicad project contains so much more and depends on interoperability of a couple of files in that project folder to make it work = more that can go wrong.
I recently tried to open a recent Word file on a XP/Office 2010 PC and crashed the PC, not a graceful refusal to open the file. There’s a lot of XP still in use unfortunately
That is much better than silently ignoring parts of the file and ending up with a pcb with errors
Yes, it is definitely better than “silent ignoring” but I wasn’t advocating that.
If you open a schematic or PCB and you are missing a component or footprint from the library, or an entire library, you will get a message telling you what it couldn’t find but it still opens and renders the schematic/board even though things are missing. What’s the difference? It is up to you how to handle that but at least you have the choice.
Now I know that is definitely not true, Microsoft would never release software like that! 