--- In kicad-users@..., "japie.greeff" <japieg@...> wrote:
Hey Guys,
Haven't been on here for a while!
I have an odd question though that I just can't figure out.
I am trying to make an interface board to a board I already have (sorta like an arduino type idea), but the other board was designed in Altium. No worries I thought I would just import the gerbers into gerbview and write out a .brd file and then append it to my design and I can allign it that way. The gerbers go into gerbview fine, but when I use export to pcbnew, it creats a .brd file, but when I open it in pcbnew every single one of the square pads has been converted into a round via hole. It wouldn't be too much of a problem but its actually proving quite difficult to allign the squares to the round holes as all the vias and everything overlay it so its quite a mess (see pic in files as conversionError.png
).
any help would be greatly appreciated!
When I've needed to do something like this I make an intermediate CAD drawing with the salient positions, pads, and hole sizes fully dimensioned and commented. Only once I'm happy with that drawing do I start on the new layout, not trying to overlay onto the CAD but using its numbers to place modules on the new board.
Not necessarily a universal best approach but I find it handy having that additional document. If you want to try this route but don't currently have a good CAD package, try DraftSight from Dassault It's "register-ware" and seems to have a pretty good rep. Disclaimer: I run Bricscad for 2D CAD and 3D modeling. Haven't tried DraftSight myself.
