Re: gEDA-user: dxf support

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

It's not a solution, but rather a set of interesting tools for you to
consider:

GerbMerge is written in Python, and can read Gerber files.  (No
suprise there . . . . .):

http://claymore.engineer.gvsu.edu/~steriana/Python/gerbmerge/

PythonCAD is written in Python (no suprise. . .), and has facilities
to read (and perhaps write) dxf files of several different revisions:

http://www.pythoncad.org/

Note that the dxf stuff is not mentioned on the web
page.  However, I have been playing with PythonCAD quite a bit, and do
know for a fact that the dxf stuff is in there.

Perhaps between these two tools you can graft something together like
this: 

PCB -- (Gerber) --> Gerber reader from GerbMerge ---+--> viewer of some sort.
                                                    |
       (.dxf)   --> Dxf reader from PythonCAD    ---+

YOu might also be able to gin up some Python program which reads the
.dxf files and exports a PCB footprint whcih you can import into PCB.
This should be easy for you since you are an expert on the PCB file  
format!  :-)

A final thought: Python is very easy to learn & is easy to use as a
RAD language.  

Stuart