What's the status of the OrCad importer?

Software
1

It’s been a year or two since this was discussed, so maybe it’s time again.

I’ve been given an OLB file and a library of other OrCad files as “documentation” for a System-on-Module I may be using. Since I don’t have OrCad I can’t look at the schematic. The “User Manual” totals all of 21 pages, and while it has snippets of the schematic there are huge gaps.

It’s not provided under NDA so I could probably call in some favors and get someone to print the schematic to PDF. But it looks like there was a plan to integrate an OrCad importer into KiCad a few years ago.

What’s the status of the OrCad importer? I don’t need a perfect import, nor do I really need the layout. I could probably chase down the external prototype sources, but then there is the issue of compatibility with the current KiCad. Is it in a more-or-less usable state? Integrated, but hidden?

2

There’s an early MR draft in KiCad for .OLB import:

You can also try importing to EasyEDA Pro first:

https://prodocs.easyeda.com/en/import-export/import-allegro-orcad/

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3

There have been many versions of OrCad over the years, so you need to be clear which you are trying to import.

4

I’m actually guessing these are OrCad files based on file types and reading comments in this forum on the OrCad importer efforts. It’s not documented which version of OrCad was used to produce the files, and I’m not familiar with OrCad file formats to be able to look at the files to tell. The best I can tell is it’s a version that existed in 2018, because that’s the dates on the files.

Do you know of an easy way to tell what revision of OrCad was used to produce a set of files, short of opening them with OrCad?

5

Thanks for that suggestion. If EasyEDA will import and display the schematic, this would be sufficient for my purposes. :grinning:

I’m still hoping one of the KiCad devs will chime in and say something like, “Oh, that’s already in KiCad v9. Just install the RC.” But I didn’t get the pony I was hoping to get for xmas either.

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6

Note that to convert the schematic .DSN file to EasyEDA Pro, you need to export to .EDF first using OrCad.

7

I have two archives. The one which supposedly has the schematic contains only a .olb file. The other supposedly contains the board, and is full of .txt, .dra, .psm files. Neither contains any .dsn or .edf files.

The board archive includes a log file indicating it was produced using version 16.6-2015S066.

8

another possibility is (if you can access a demo or licenced) to import to altium, then you can convert to KiCad.
But first you have to locate the missing .dsn files (.olb are just orcad libraries).

I have done so for my legacy design (orcad16), the downside is that in the conversion, hierarchical blocks are messed up and a lot of cleanup has to be manually done.