Author Topic: CircuitStudio extensions for better compability with Altium  (Read 6002 times)

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Offline PuchaczTopic starter

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CircuitStudio extensions for better compability with Altium
« on: November 25, 2021, 04:46:50 pm »
Greetings,

I am looking for any informations about CircuitStudio's (1.5.2) extensions, that would help import/export projects between Altium and CS. In Altium there is a "Import Wizard", is there anything similiar in CS?

In my "extensions and updates" tab I cant see any possibble options to purchase or install. How can I do it?
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: CircuitStudio extensions for better compability with Altium
« Reply #1 on: November 25, 2021, 07:27:20 pm »
I think this was answered here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-designer-and-circuit-studio-compatibility/

A few years old, but nothing much has changed in CS since then!
 

Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: CircuitStudio extensions for better compability with Altium
« Reply #2 on: November 26, 2021, 10:49:48 am »
Altium schdoc and library files work in both CS and AD, I haven't seen any compatibility issues there.
CS pcb files (cspcbdoc) can be imported to AD easily (because that's what Altium want you to do - upgrade to AD).

However, you can't easily import Altium pcbdoc into CS (Altium don't want to help you go that way).
You have to export the board from AD into binary v5 format, then import this into CS.
Then update all PCB components from libs to get the 3D models showing.
PITA but not a showstopper for one board. But it does effectively prevent a group working on one board with a mix of CS and AD users.
 

Offline pointhi

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Re: CircuitStudio extensions for better compability with Altium
« Reply #3 on: November 26, 2021, 09:03:53 pm »
If you know a bit about the file-format, you will see that converting between the Altium products can by done by a simple 100 line search-replace script :D

https://gitlab.com/pointhi/kicad/-/wikis/Differences-between-different-Altium-File-Formats
 

Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: CircuitStudio extensions for better compability with Altium
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2021, 10:23:42 am »
Indeed, both AD and CS pcb files use the Microsoft Compound Document Format, which can be opened in 7zip.
Thanks for the link to the (incomplete) cross-reference of AD stream names and the CS hashed stream names.
Perhaps stream names are the only change blocking two-way compatibility between AD and CS.
Or perhaps there is further obfuscation.
Have you tested that? Do you have a search-replace script to share?

When converting a cspcbdoc to pcbdoc in AD, there are definitely more substantial file differences. But that might just be cruft.
 

Offline pointhi

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Re: CircuitStudio extensions for better compability with Altium
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2021, 12:16:16 pm »
I never tested conversion between the different formats, but my KiCad Altium importer works with all three formats and only requires knowledge about the stream names. Everything else is exactly the same parser code.
 


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