Orcad footprint/layout import idea

Former Member over 15 years ago

I've been pondering an idea to import layout data from Orcad,

particularly to get part footprints which are provided by a number of

chip vendors.

Cadence offers free Allegro PCB viewers in a few different versions.

They offer some form of ASCII dump, I selected the BGA pads for a

component I'm interested in from an example layout and dumped to ascii.

Then parse that ASCII dump for pin names and coordinates, I built a csv

spreadsheet, and then had a cheesy perl script to turn that information

into a .scr to run in Eagle. Kindof roundabout, but worked well enough

as a start. If I ever find time, I'd like to turn it into an ulp.

I've only dumped a couple layouts this way, and there are at least two

different syntaxes I've seen, so need to study and understand those

things better.

They also have a free schematic viewer, though I haven't tried to figure

out if that has some sort of ASCII dump as well. So far I've just spent

all the time required to look at and reimplement symbols by hand into

Eagle. :/ But this tool is useful to be able to see said symbols and

reference/example schematics when I otherwise had no useful access to them.