On Wed, 1 Sep 2010, Brian F. G. Bidulock wrote:
Do you know of any place where the V2009 (*.plb09) or earlier V6 (*.plb) file formats are documented? Or, anybody willing to reverse-engineer the format?
No, it's not public. It seems that it's simply a csv with the ipc parameters encoded in a 'base64-ish' way, nothing else.
I converted some by hand that I got from gEDA's library. Someone did the work to recalculate the lands using the IPC-7351 equations with an m4 script. I hand converted a bunch of chip capacitors and resistors to pcbnew modules (pcbnew's library chip capacitors were wayyyyy wrong).
I have a lot of discretes in my libs if you want them, all done with ipc (except SOT23, which our assembly people said preferred with bigger pads)
their own *.plb09 files. (Which begs the question: where did they get the format? Or do they just use LP Wizard or something.)
LP Librarian or the LP Calculator itself can generate the plb files. LP Wizard directly creates a CAD package (only for your licensed CAD, of course).
manufacturer's recommended land pattern anyway. Some do not provide IPC-7351 values on their datasheets.
Manufacturers which don't say how big a pin is? Some of the information the calculator ask are only for library purpose or for trigger some choice.
Do you thing that purchasing the standard would shed some light on this library format? Or are the fields in the file just the (some of the) parameters that get stuffed into the equations? It seems that there are a lot of non-IPC things too (like silk screen clearance).
No, they only say how to use the calculator, otherwise you wouldn't buy the LP Wizard :D Heck, they doesn't even let you download the calculator because otherwise people didn't buy the standard! But I think that some experimentation with the calculator would give insight on the encoding. If they aren't so sick to actually encrypt the field.
Maybe all we need is a kind-of-a module-editor wizard that uses the calculations from IPC-7[23]51, A, B to guide the user and generate (and name) the module under module editor which can then be customized from there. It would still be nice for that wizard to read directly a vendor-supplied PLB file. What are your thoughts?
My doc should give all the info needed for doing such a thing. Oh, and it's only up to the A revision (sorry, we aren't so rich to buy each update:D). As of the plb file I'll see if I can reverse engineer some of it. -- Lorenzo Marcantonio Logos Srl _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
