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Migrating off Eagle to open source PCB tools

morgaine

A very interesting blog post by Olimex on "Why is important Open Source Hardware Community to use Open Source CAD tools" was posted a few days ago.  Their rationale and migration plan is great news for open source fans of course, and also great news for all hardware enthusiasts who work on complex boards that exceed the limits of the proprietary freebies.  The many very highly positive blog comments reflect that.

 

I'm really looking forward to their kiCAD migration tests.  There will be some pain involved, as they do acknowledge, but the end goal is worth it.

 

Morgaine.

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  • I hope it goes well for them.

     

    I'm not a fan of Eagle, never could quite get along with it.. I use gEDA myself, so would obviously have preferred if they'd went that direction image   I can see that the Cern contributions to KiCad will probably mean it'll evolve to be the more prominent and capable package though, so perhaps it's time to give it a try.

     

    Either way, having the Olimex OSHW designs available in a less restrictive format can only be a good thing, for us, for Olimex and for KiCad !

  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    I use gEDA myself, so would obviously have preferred if they'd went that direction    I can see that the Cern contributions to KiCad will probably mean it'll evolve to be the more prominent and capable package though, so perhaps it's time to give it a try.

     

    Do you know whether the two can import each other's library formats?  Interoperability between open source tools is pretty important, given that the community has to rely on its own means and resources.

     

    Morgaine.

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  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    I use gEDA myself, so would obviously have preferred if they'd went that direction    I can see that the Cern contributions to KiCad will probably mean it'll evolve to be the more prominent and capable package though, so perhaps it's time to give it a try.

     

    Do you know whether the two can import each other's library formats?  Interoperability between open source tools is pretty important, given that the community has to rely on its own means and resources.

     

    Morgaine.

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  • in reply to morgaine

    Morgaine Dinova wrote:

    Do you know whether the two can import each other's library formats?  Interoperability between open source tools is pretty important, given that the community has to rely on its own means and resources.

    Not sure if either can do it directly, but I've heard various discussions on external tools to do it over the years.  Never really had a reason to investigate though. The gEDA tools essentially use text files, so it should be quite possible even if you had to start from scratch.

     

    I found this one with a very quick search https://github.com/upverter/schematic-file-converter/ which appears to take care of sematics at least, not sure about pcb layouts.