EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => KiCad => Topic started by: phil from seattle on June 21, 2020, 04:17:01 pm
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This must have come up before but I couldn't find an exact answer.
I'm ramping up to Kicad after 20+ years of using Eagle. I've gotten to the point where I am fairly comfortable with it but have an extensive set of libraries I want to bring along. About 500 devices in total. I have found the snapeda online conversion tool but that is painfully slow to even do just a couple. If it didn't make me go through multiple selection steps and let me see which is the zip vs mod download, it would be easier but still way too tedious. I just want to point a conversion tool at a library and have 2 new kicad libs created - symbol and footprint. I have a lot of custom footprints that need to be pulled over. Especially for a lot of inexpensive parts from ebay/ali/bang/even-Amazon that don't have any part numbers.
Any suggestions?
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I share your pain, but on different platforms. My solution is to take the opportunity to redo the parts as I need them and fix all the little things that weren't bad enough to justify a makeover in the originals.
As it happens, that's also how I change PCs: start from scratch and just reinstall apps as I need them. Doesn't happen often enough to be a big drag but keeps things clean and relevant, at least for a while.
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I share your pain, but on different platforms. My solution is to take the opportunity to redo the parts as I need them and fix all the little things that weren't bad enough to justify a makeover in the originals.
It's also a good time to purge obsolete/never used parts from the library.
Start by adding only the parts you need for your next design.
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Footprints can be directly included. Just add the eagle lib to the kicad library table and you will be able to use all footprints from that lib directly.
Symbols are a different story. My suggestion is you make a single project where you add every symbol you want to transfer and import that project. KiCad will extract symbol libs as well as footprints from that project.
And yes this is a known missing feature but well it is as it is.
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Thanks. Yes, I have plenty of devices to tweak and purge but also a lot (a lot more) that are just fine the way they are. The ones that need tweaking get done as I use them and I expect that to continue into the Kicad world. Having to stop and screw around with 5 or 6 parts is why, in the past, I have dropped back to Eagle. I wanted to get a layout done, not fiddle with libraries.
Sigh. Will probably keep a foot in both worlds for a while. I know I should fully transition to Kicad...
Great idea on the import project. Will do that when I get some time.
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I wrote a tool to do that : https://github.com/bobc/eakit
I haven't updated it for a while, but if you are interested I could do so.
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Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for the offer. At this point I am afar enough along that it's not needed.