Re: gEDA-user: Documentation for convert_sym README file

[Kipton Moravec <kip@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 19:19 -0400, Mike Jarabek wrote:
> Kipton Moravec wrote:
> You can use this program on the Viewdraw schematics, and all symbol 
> files, running it should give a brief command line synopsis.  When you 
> set up your geda project, I would recommend putting the schematics in 
> one directory, and the symbols in another. Follow one of the tutorials 
> to configure the geda config files for your project to look in the 
> symbol directory for your converted symbols, and look for the schematics 
> in the schematic directory you created.  It's probably good to use the 
> 'reset-component-library' command to flush the built in list of library 
> searches in case one of your Viewdraw symbol names clash with one of the 
> shipped symbol names.  (Look on the wiki at 
> http://geda.seul.org/wiki/geda:faq-gschem under Gschem 
> configuration/customization for information on the configuration files.  
> You will only need a few lines in each to accomplish what you need.  If 
> you set up your various conversion projects similarly, you can probably 
> copy the config files from one project to another.)
> 
> There is another utility included with the geda distribution called 
> 'smash_megafile', which will break one of the Viewlogic '.lib' library 
> files apart into the individual symbol files.  You may need to do this 
> on one or more Megafiles if you have used any of the stock components.  
> Do this in a separate directory, as unpacking one of these can create 
> many small symbol files.  You will have to look at the gschem output log 
> to see which files should be copied into your symbol directory.
> 
> The process is somewhat manual, but can get the job done with some patience.
> 
> Note that not all the Viewdraw attributes map into geda equivalents, so 
> you may have to use gattrib on the resulting schematic to pound them 
> into shape if you are planning to go to layout with PCB.
> 
> It's been quite a while since I have played with these utilities, so 
> please let us know how things work out.
> > I do not know how to find the README. Can someone give me the full path
> > to the README for convert_sym?
> >

Since I am so bad at Linux, and the files were originally Windows 98
files, I went into the COMMAND line and did a 

dir /B *.* >dir.txt

That put each file on a separate line in the dir.txt file.

Then I imported it into Excel. 

The first column was "convert_sym"
The second column was the file name I imported. 
The third file was the redirected output. >filename.

Then I made sure the column widths were wide enough for the longest
name. saved it as "dir.xls", then saved again as a space delimited file
"dir.prn"
Copied it back to the Linux computer and was ready to go.
 
There were a few surprises. 

First the DOS text file had /r appended to each name. A friend of mine
who knows Linux stopped by while his son was at 9:00 p.m to 10:00 p.m.
hockey practice. (??!!) he loaded some dos2unix conversion program which
removed the /r from the files.

All of the Viewdraw symbols ended in .1 I changed the ".1" to ".sym".
Which did not work. All ".1" had to be changed to "-1.sym" to match what
was converted in the schematic.

Next gotcha was that DOS had mixed case names. The conversion program
assumed everything was lower case. Fortunately Excel has a lower()
function.

Last gotcha was my "heavy" symbols were like "C0_1-50V-0603.1" When the
symbol was used in the schematic the "-" was converted to "_". So the
schematic was looking for "c0_1_50v_0603-1.sym"

We made a gafrc file and put 
(component-library "./symbols") 

in it. It did not work. So we put 
(reset-component-library) 

in the beginning of the gafrc and it worked. We got all symbols in
except the ground symbol. Which was native to the ViewDraw, and I did
not have the viewdraw megafile, to get it from. So we removed the 

(reset-component-library)

and it pulled it from the default library. The only problem was that it
did not connect to the net line. The spacing was off. (minor problem).

Thank goodness I had Excel, it made fast work of it especially with all
the mods to the names as we learned more.

I had 1297 symbols and 1827 pages of schematics.

Took about two hours with the help of my Linux friend for the last hour.

There are some attribute problems I have to look into yet, but it
appears to be mostly working. That is the problem for tomorrow.

Kip 


 

-- 
Kipton Moravec AE5IB
"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain




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