Re: gEDA-user: freedog pictures

[Stuart Brorson <sdb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Since it's quite common to get reference designs that include gerbers, I
> was wondering if it would be feasible to to convert these back into,
> effectively, a pcb footprint.

Actually, I've often thought that we should advertise gEDA to the big
chip guys as a method to distribute reference designs -- schematics,
layouts, and Gerbers.

Since gEDA is completely free (both cost-free and open source), it's a
good, neutral vehicle for chip vendors to distribute reference
designs.  Any engineer who wants to use the reference design can grab
the tools off teh web, open the reference design file, 
and make immediate use of the reference design. Indeed, it
would speed up the design process if I could just open a vendor's
reference design & copy/paste the parts I wanted directly into my
schematic instead of having to re-draw everything.  Now that's design
re-use!

A different point:  In the past we have discussed creating a utility
which would read a Gerber file and output either a .pcb or a .fp file
corresponding to the contents of the Gerber.  Maybe the utility could
be instructed to know which file is associated with which PCB layer?
In any event, the utility would make it easy to load a legacy board
Gerber, and then make easy edits in it.

Stuart

[1] OK, Linux/unix/Mac only, but who cares about those other operating
systems?


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