Hi Clas, Thank you for your work on this project.
Please open an MR on gitlab and we'll review it. Please let me know if any of the corpus is available for us to use in our verification Best, Seth Seth Hillbrand *Lead Developer* +1-530-302-5483 Long Beach, CA www.kipro-pcb.com [email protected] On Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 12:34 PM Clas Sivertsen <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello KiCad developers, > > I'm an electronics engineer and PCB designer who has been working a lot in > OrCAD and allegro, but have been transitioning more and more to KiCad. > Since i have many hundreds of designs already done in OrCad, and especially > often get reference designs in OrCad format, i have been working on a > Windows app that converts them to KiCad. > > Thus, i was thinking this would be a nice contribution to make this app > into an import option for KiCad so i used Claude with the latest Fable 5 to > turn my app into an import option in KiCad. Before i submitted the code for > this, i ran the app on some 800+ .dsn files i had accumulated on my > computer over the years, and i have fixed all issues i could notice. > > How it was validated > -------------------- > I checked correctness by exporting the imported netlist with kicad-cli and > comparing named-net pin membership against OrCAD's own stored net tables. > I ran > this across a corpus of 815 real-world designs (OrCAD releases spanning > ~1995–2026): all import without crashing, and on modern flat/multi-page > designs > the net membership matches. Hierarchical designs currently import flattened > (with warnings); pre-2003 files are rejected with a clear message. Every > page > also loads and plots in the current master build. > > Prior art / relationship to existing work > ------------------------------------------ > Format knowledge derives from the MIT-licensed OpenOrCadParser project > plus my > own reverse engineering. I'm aware of the draft MR !1963 by Werni2A adding > an > OrCAD Library (.OLB) importer — this schematic (.DSN) importer is > complementary > to that effort, and both build on OpenOrCadParser. > > Disclosure: AI assistance > ------------------------- > In line with KiCad's tool-generated-content policy, I want to be > transparent up > front. The OrCAD .DSN format reverse-engineering, the validation corpus and > methodology, and all the scope and design decisions are mine. The code > itself — > both the original standalone converter and this C++ port into KiCad — was > written with an AI coding assistant (Anthropic's Claude Code) under my > direction, and I iterated on it against the ~815-design corpus until it was > correct. I've reviewed and validated the result and I take full > responsibility > for the code and its maintenance. > > The branch is on my fork here for reference: > https://gitlab.com/TaipeiViking/kicad/-/tree/orcad-schematic-importer > > Thanks for taking a look — I'd welcome any guidance before I raise the MR. > > Next, i am working on AI driven auto place and route that i would like to > also contribute in the future. > > Best, > Clas Sivertsen, Taipei Taiwan > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "KiCad Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/4e1974b0-3542-41f5-a0dd-a68eac0ea96bn%40kicad.org > <https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/4e1974b0-3542-41f5-a0dd-a68eac0ea96bn%40kicad.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "KiCad Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAFdeG-r2j6oGQ-2WawmHXDZKDw31VLtf3n890g-EswxTXiCJyw%40mail.gmail.com.
