Import PCBs from Kicad

[lmagalhaes]

Hi there,

Is it possible to import just the PCB drawing from Kicad to Altium ? We recently bought the Altium license, but the previous projects were done in Kicad and now we want to do a panel in Altium mixing a couple of projects and needed to have the PCB files for that... Does anyone know a workaround?

Best regards,

Luis

[Pseudobyte]

This might be a bit of hack... but it looks like you can import Kicad into circuit maker, and then you could download those circuit maker files and import them into AD.

https://www.altium.com/solution/kicad-library

[thm_w]

If you are saying you want to mix multiple designs on a panel, it may be easier to generate gerbers and then merge those together.

https://hackaday.com/2017/06/21/panelizing-boards-the-easy-way/

[lmagalhaes]

I opened a ticket on the Altium support line and the response I got was:

"Thanks for your support request.

I had an internal conversation about the document. It is not possible to import KiCad into Altium designer (or Circuit Maker)."

Which is kinda sad, seeing that Altium is trying to get KiCad users to switch tools: https://www.altium.com/solution/kicad-library and https://www.altium.com/solution/kicad-pcb-design-software-free-download.

Regarding the PCB panelizer, I need to have control over the fiducials and the frame, since it's going to be assembled off site, so I really need the PCBs on Altium.

I've spend the entire morning generating gerbers and then importing the gerbers in Altium and converting them to PCB, but the results aren't perfect. Sometimes you lose a pad, sometimes it's a bit of ground plane... Right now I'm trying to export from KiCad to Eagle and then import the Eagle files to Altium, see if that works... but since Altium is so vocal about getting people to change tools, it should have an importer at least.

[thm_w]

Which is kinda sad, seeing that Altium is trying to get KiCad users to switch tools: https://www.altium.com/solution/kicad-library and https://www.altium.com/solution/kicad-pcb-design-software-free-download.

Yeah not sure why they couldn't grasp that no one would move from KiCad -> Altium, but its probably too small of a market for them

Regarding the PCB panelizer, I need to have control over the fiducials and the frame, since it's going to be assembled off site, so I really need the PCBs on Altium.

I've spend the entire morning generating gerbers and then importing the gerbers in Altium and converting them to PCB, but the results aren't perfect. Sometimes you lose a pad, sometimes it's a bit of ground plane... Right now I'm trying to export from KiCad to Eagle and then import the Eagle files to Altium, see if that works... but since Altium is so vocal about getting people to change tools, it should have an importer at least.

So maybe could do almost everything in Altium: fiducials, frame, etc. then leave a space for the Kicad gerber and use another program to paste it in. Don't know off hand what program though.

[ddavidebor]

So maybe could do almost everything in Altium: fiducials, frame, etc. then leave a space for the Kicad gerber and use another program to paste it in. Don't know off hand what program though.

I would recommend FAB3000 from Numerical Innovations for that. If it's a one-off thing you can also use the trial.

[jazper]

Just added for completeness - https://easyeda.com/ will convert from Kicad to EasyEDA to Altium

The schematic conversion didn't work for me, but the pcb converter did.

[tszaboo]

I've just checked, and they added an importer in the meantime for KiCAD.

[Gibson486]

I faced this issue years ago. Was not possible and Altium did not really want to look into it. We had to just redo everything and ended up just paying some 3rd party to convert everything.

In reality, it is probably just as much work to import and it is to redo with regards to the schematic. I have imported from Eagle and other PCB packages. There was so much editing from a library and net connection stand point that it would have just been faster to just redo it. With the PCB, it was better but still was not 100% converted correctly.