Trouble Importing PCB files from Solidworks PCB (Altium)

[paulvdh]

I don’t know much about those file formats, but if other methods fail, you can probably still:

Reverse engineering KiCad project from Gerber files

2022-01-17 The goal of this reverse-engineering tutorial is to re-create a complete KiCad project from partial information assuming the only information available is a schematic in some readable, (but not EDA form, such as a .pdf or a .png picture), and a set of gerber files. The Gerber files will create a PCB with much PCB information missing, however, using this method is easier than re-designing a PCB from scratch, and can also be extended to any other program that creates Gerber files. …

With that method you can get around 80% of the work embedded in a PCB in a few minutes. Reconstructing the other 20% is a bit tedious and time consuming, but not very difficult to do.

Also, If you are using some proprietary file format, It’s always nice to export your work in some universally readable format, even if it’s for example just a .PDF for schematics. I’ve been bitten a few times by software that has gone obsolete (20+ years ago) and no way to read those old file formats. From some old projects, PNG pictures made from the schematic is all that is left now.