Re: gEDA-user: anyone import into pcb a kicad netlist? I have kicad schematics and modules for all my parts but want to use the topo autorouter in pcb

[al davis <ad252@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 08 July 2010, joshua wojnas wrote:
> anyone import into pcb a kicad netlist? I have kicad
> schematics and modules for all my parts but want to use the
> topo autorouter in pcb

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.

gEDA currently provides a means of generating a Spice netlist, a 
fairly small subset of the spice language, but none of the other 
functionality mentioned here.

So ...  any volunteers?


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