On Thursday 08 July 2010, josh_eeg wrote: > Has anyone found a way to use GEDA's PCB topo autorouter then > how my kicad netlists or spectra import export files could > be used or some files? I would even remake it in GEDA if > nessisary but like kicad and don't want to...
Not that I know of, for now, but I want to take the opportunity to ask for help on a project that could provide this functionality. The project is language plugins for gnucap. A language plugin can read and write one format. I would like to recruit someone, maybe four people, to write four such plugins. They are: 1: gEDA/gschem 2: gEDA/PCB 3: Kicad schematic 4: Kicad layout There are existing plugins for Spice, Spectre, and Verilog, which gnucap uses. The Verilog format is sufficiently rich as to be able to convey all relevant information to and from any of the formats, so it could be used as a neutral interchange format. There's also a moth-balled, 95% complete, unreleased one for IBIS (version 3), which I will revive if someone else makes either #2 or #4 as listed above. These plugins interface to a library function that manages internal storage of the info. Gnucap is now using that library function. It is trivial to write a driver program that would use it to simply read one format and write another. This will be available in the next snapshot, and could be distributed separately to make a standalone translator. The basis of all of this is that it is translating circuit descriptions. Schematics and layouts are renderings of circuits, so the circuit description is augmented with rendering attributes. So, if we can get someone to write these four plugins, that will provide a migration path between Kicad and gEDA, both ways. It will also provide a path to simulation for both Kicad and gEDA, both from schematic and layout (enabling post-layout simulation). Providing any of the four is a valuable contribution in the sense that even one gives us functionality we don't already have that is known to be needed. So ... any volunteers?
