[kicad-users] Create module from gerber files

2008-11-25 Thread David Bourgeois
Hi,

I need a LLP32 footprint from National and found the gerber on their
website: http://www.national.com/analog/packaging/gerber

Is there any way I can create a module from these? I tried to use
gerbview, import the layers but all I can do is export to pcbnew and
even that doesn't work well, as all rectangles are rounded as if the
resolution was much lowered.

Thanks,
David



Re: [kicad-users] uploading a new library on kicad library site

2007-12-14 Thread David Bourgeois
Hello,

I think it would be nice to have some kind of guidelines and good  
practices for creating Kicad Libraries. I only created a few components so  
far but it would be great if everybody could help increasing the available  
libraries. And to have some consistency, it would be necessary to have  
guidelines. A small tutorial could also be great to help newbies create  
components to right way and tell them how to share them.
I would be glad to be able to contribute if I can have a way to control  
the quality of my library before submitting it. Things I wondered about  
are naming conventions, how to organize pins (mapping of the chip or  
grouping in a way that make more sense), what about the power pins, ...

If someone is interested in this, I can do a list of all the questions I  
had, that can be a good start for creating guidelines.

To ease contribution, can't we put all libraries on SVN, either the  
official kicad SVN or another one? I think there's already such a project  
started on sourceforge but without much contributions. There could be a  
submit section where everybody would have write access, then maintainers  
could push them in an official branch once they're sure they meet the  
guidelines.

Well, that's a bit more complex than what I described but the main idea is  
to make it easy for anybody to contrinute by adding or improving  
components.

David Bourgeois



Re: [kicad-users] Kicad or another tool

2007-11-25 Thread David Bourgeois
Hi Chris,

I'm not a Mac but I've seen a couple of messages about compiling Kicad on  
Mac lately, probably on the developer mailing list. You should have a look  
at the archives. From what I remember, there have been some work done to  
improve compiling on Mac OS but there are some issues with wxwidgets 2.8.  
You may have to use 2.6.

David

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:47:58 +0100, chris_inacio [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
wrote:

 Hello all,

 I'm looking for some advice on choosing a PCB tool.  I am new to PCB  
 design.  I've done
 FPGA RTL and embedded RTOS, and such professionally, but I've never done  
 my own PCB's.
 I like what I can see with Kicad, but I will be using Mac OS X as my  
 operating system.  I've
 gotten it to compile on Mac OS X, but it is clumsy at this point.   
 (That's probably being a
 little generous too.)  There doesn't seem to be a lot of Mac OS X  
 support.  It looks like the
 last post about a Mac OS X port was in August.  My first question, is  
 there any actual
 interest in a Mac OS X port?  I can probably help make it better; but I  
 don't want to spend
 all my free time improving the tools, and not doing any PCB design.

 Second, there are a handful of alternatives for Mac OS.  Osmond PCB,  
 EAGLE, McCAD,
 PCBWarrior, Elektro CAD.  Does anyone have any opinions of these  
 alternatives?  I'm not
 trying to troll for trouble here -- just some honest feedback.  For just  
 about every tool I've
 ever used for this type of stuff (and embedded debug, etc.)  investing  
 time into learning
 the tool is a lot of investment, I don't want to waste my effort if I  
 can avoid it.  I don't
 mind pitching in some to a Kicad to Mac OS X port, but like I said, I  
 also want to get other
 stuff done.

 And if it matters, I'm looking at designing some moderately complex  
 boards.  Some mixed
 signal, ARM + FPGA + ethernet + wifi.  ARM + FPGA + GPS module + radio  
 modem.  So I'm
 sure I will be digging into Johnson's Black Magic to help me along the  
 way.  I doubt there
 is any kind of open source equivalent to Hyperlinx or Maxwell?  Would  
 this type of board
 design impact my tool choice?  (And yes, I do have some very experienced  
 board design
 friends to help me out, but I would like to do it mostly on my own.)

 Thanks,
 Chris Inacio





 Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your  
 question.
 Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator  
 of Kicad.
 Please visit http://www.kicadlib.org for details of how to contribute  
 your symbols/modules to the kicad library.
 For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the  
 kicad-devel group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-devel
 Yahoo! Groups Links







Re: [kicad-users] Re: Creating an interface to FreeRouting

2007-11-15 Thread David Bourgeois
 We need to explore the work order or bounty idea further.  Maybe a
 little out of the box thinking is required.  Website automation would
 help, but tell me if this is easy or not:

 1) Discussion is done on this list to create a work order, usually
 an enhancement.

 2) Someone posts the work order on a website built to support this
 new business model.

 3) Developer(s) bid on the work order, with each bid listed
 seperately.  Now you have one work order with multiple bids attached
 to it.

 4) Users can tentatively commit with credit card to funding any or all
 of the bids.  The credit cards are not billed until the trip point for
 any of the bids are reached.  The trip point is when enough tentative
 commitments have been submitted. Only the first bid to be tripped
 fires the credit card billing.  At that point the other bids are dead,
 and their tentative commitments are voided.  On the bid that tripped,
 maybe a partial payment of the funds go to the developer, with balance
 of the funds held in escrow until the work is completed.

 Would not a mechanism like this turbo charge the Kicad project?  Maybe
 within 5 years this could be the best software in the world.  Within 1
 year you'd have no reason to use any other software.  It is
 capitalism, without the middle man: the software company.

 Yes you can find holes in the idea, but it is a starting point and
 demands refinement.

Hi Dick,

I completely agree with the idea that it would be nice to sponsor the  
developers to move the project formward.
I would myself contribute a small amount to keep the current developers  
doing their job. I'm only doing small hobby projects but Kicad is a great  
solution for publishing open-source hardware projects. But if some  
companies are now using it, I guess they would be able to contrinute much  
more to the project as that will save them those expensive commercial CAD  
packages.

Googling a bit around, I found that bounties usually lead to community  
disorders  
(http://www.openlogic.com/blogs/2007/07/guadec-keynote-would-you-do-it-again-for-free/).
  
Now we need to take into account that kicad has few active developers and  
that they're very commited to the project. I'm sure they're ways to get  
what we want: get the project moving.

I found 2 links for funding services that may help, I have no experience  
with them though:
http://micropledge.com/
http://www.opensourcexperts.com/

David


Re: [kicad-users] Re: using subfolders for extra libraries

2007-11-02 Thread David Bourgeois
Thanks for fixing that issue Jean-Pierre! It works now (btw the svn  
notification list is great :-) )

On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:54:06 +0100, Robert [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
wrote:

 That field is completely empty - I've never entered anything into it.

 Just out of curiosity, what is it intended to be used for?   A default
 directory for then you hit the Add button?

It seems that the default path is stripped from the library file path when  
a new library is added, so if you move the libraries and change the path,  
it should still work. But if a library is outside the default path, it's  
full path is kept and the default path isn't used.

David


Re: [kicad-users] using subfolders for extra libraries

2007-11-01 Thread David Bourgeois
On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:51:13 +0100, David Cleare  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I must be missing something obvious here...

 How can I add libraries and modules that are in subfolders of the
 main /kicad/library and /kicad/modules folders? When I browse to them
 in Libs and Dir, I can add, but when I close the window the
 error Library ... not found.. It even happens when I specifiy the
 full path.

 I'm using the Win32 version of KiCad.

 sorry if this is too obvious, did you try save cfg. I haven't tried  
 your
 exact thing your are doing, but it works for folders elsewhere..

 dc

I have the same problem under Linux, Actually the error shows up when  
saving the configuration file.

David Bourgeois


Re: [kicad-users] Re: using subfolders for extra libraries

2007-11-01 Thread David Bourgeois
On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:18:20 +0100, Harold King Tarun  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi

 Have you tried using the latest version of Kicad? because in my system
 both Win32 and Linux I can add new library (file), save configuration
 file and even stays there when I close and re-open the project. I'm
 not encountering any error so far.

Yes, I'm using kicad from SVN. What I tried is to add libraries that are  
not in the 'Libary files path, so add libraries from /libs and from  
/libs/category1. I can add them but when closing the dialog, I get an  
error that the libaries that are not in the path (from category1) were not  
found. This sounds normal as it's only possible to set a single path for  
libraries, and it seems not to be recursive. I guess all libarries should  
simply be located in the same folder.

David


Re: [kicad-users] Re: Unused pins

2007-11-01 Thread David Bourgeois
On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:05:01 +0100, Harold King Tarun  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi David,

 I suggest you use a No Connect Flag to those un-used pins. This will
 not generate any error when you run DRC (PCB) or ERC (SCH).

Thanks Harold. I'm using the 'no connect flag' on regular pins that I  
don't want to connect in my design. But those NC pins aren't even  
connected to the chip in the IC package so ideally we shouldn't have to  
flag them on each placement. Either they should be flagged in libedit and  
not drawn, or they shouldn't be placed at all. I'm not looking for a  
workaround, just trying to grasp kicad's way of doing things.

 I understand what you mean, you can create your own schematic library
 using the library editor to create your own set or customized
 component but be sure to place a footprint to link your component to PCB.

I looked up a few components in the default libraries of kicad and didn't  
find any component which had its footprint field defined. You can still  
link your footprint in CVPCB though I think it would be more appropriate  
at least for IC's to have the footprints defined in libedit. In my case,  
how can I define 3 footprints for the CP2515? I need 18-Lead PDIP (300  
mil), 18-Lead SOIC (300 mil) and 20-Lead TSSOP (4.4 mm).
Can I add multiple footprints in the footprint field or do I need to use  
filters?

Thanks for your help,
David


Re: [kicad-users] Re: using subfolders for extra libraries

2007-11-01 Thread David Bourgeois
On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:58:15 +0100, Robert [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
wrote:

 I have libraries in two separate directories, on different drives
 (representing the those supplied with kicad and my own).   I had no
 difficulties doing this.   I used Preferences...Libs and Dir from the
 menu, then clicked Add to add the library, and Save Cfg to save the
 new configuration.   Does that not work for you?

Hi Robert,

it doesn't work for me if I do exactly that. Which directory do you set in  
the 'Library Files path' field?

David


[kicad-users] Gentoo live ebuild

2007-10-13 Thread David Bourgeois
Hi,

I create a live ebuild for compiling and installing kicad from SVN head  
under Gentoo linux.
Its now as simple as typing 'emerge kicad-live' to get kicad updated to  
the latest svn revision.

You can grab the ebuild at  
http://svn.engelkotzen.net/public/live-ebuilds/sci-electronics/kicad-live/kicad-live-0.1.ebuild
and copy it into your overlay.

Please let me know of any problem you may encounter.
Alternatively, I added this ebuild to the live-ebuilds overlay so it's  
possible to get it from layman. Here are the instructions.

To use the overlay you need to emerge layman and add the overlay:
emerge -va layman
echo source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf  /etc/make.conf
layman -f -a live-ebuilds

You can then install kicad with
emerge -va kicad-live

If a version of kicad was already installed, you will have to unmerge it  
before you'll be able to install kicad-live:
emerge -C kicad

Finally, it might be useful to update the overlay from time to time in  
case the ebuild changes:
layman -S

HTH and thanks to the active contributors that constantly improve kicad.
David


Please read the Kicad FAQ in the group files section before posting your 
question.
Please post your bug reports here. They will be picked up by the creator of 
Kicad.
Please visit http://www.kicadlib.org for details of how to contribute your 
symbols/modules to the kicad library.
For building Kicad from source and other development questions visit the 
kicad-devel group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kicad-devel 
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