Pads Pro question about silkscreen passing from sch to pcb

[Alex Eisenhut]

Is there a way to attach a property to a component in designer that becomes a silkscreen text attached to that component?

Simply put, a test point on the pcb that has an identifier on the silkscreen besides the refdes. Right now, it's a manual process and I can't believe that's the best we can do in 2023, or even 1983.

Maybe just a hint what to look for in the help?

Thanks!

[pienari]

Hi.
I found same issue when i tryed to make an order from JLCPCB.
I updated my PADS standard to 2.8 but still same problem.

[Zoli]

Quick test in Kicad: +5V is the extra text added to the property sheet.

[pienari]

So .. i got maybe 100 shemas and layout what i have made for PADS.
I have to start looking new desingn software, is there any other software what would accept PADS files?.

[Doctorandus_P]

@ pienari:
altium has apparently quite a lot of importers, but I do not like that company very much, and can't afford their software anyway.
It could be an option to get a free evaluation version of altium, import, and then import the altium projects in KiCad again.

KiCad does not directly import altium projects, but it does import altium schematics and altium PCB's.
KiCad can also import a set of Gerber files and convert them to a PCB, but as much info is missing in the gerber files the process requires a fair bit of additional manual work.

It is also quite possible there are online services that do this for a fee, but I never looked into that.

Also, your software is likely to be able to produce output of the schematic in some "universal" format, such as .pdf, .png and/or .svg, and when a project gets archived I tend to add such output to the archive, and also a set of Gerbers, because that is a pretty universal format too. With that information, any project can be re-created later. This is a quite labor intensive process, but it is relatively simple (and boring) data entry and that is much quicker then a complete re design. From some of my old projects (30+ years ago) a schematic in .png format is all that I still have left.  But in the end it does not matter much. because, well, they are old projects. You may want to consider how much effort you want to put in converting your old projects. Maybe only 10 or so out of the 100 are important enough to convert and the rest can be archived and converted later only if the need to do so ever arrives. And who knows, someone may write a direct importer for pads to KiCad at some future date...

[pienari]

Thank you for the reply.
I try to test and hope il find something new and exciting.