At 04:26 PM 9/29/2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[...] P99SE SP6. They need to convert it to their in-house
system using Mentor Graphics. Any good tips on the conversion?
There are conversion utilities, I think, but they tend to be expensive.
Aside from that the generic method is to use Gerber for interchange.
One plan I developed but never used was this:
Create a PCB with one each of all the footprints used in the design.
Import this to the target system. Use it to build footprints in that
system. Generate a Protel Pick and Place file. Protel can use such a
file for autoplacement. If Mentor has the facility to place from
file, you're almost home.
Then generate from Protel the tracks and vias and import them into
the target system.
Protel could import rather easily with its tools, following this kind
of procedure, how easy it would be to take a Protel file into another
system would depend on the tools available in that system. Importing
gerber is pretty common. Importing pick and place, not so common.
In Protel, as well, there can be access to an ASCII version of the
file, as well as spreadsheet access, and it would not be difficult to
use pin location and number data to import such into Protel; if the
target system has this kind of access (instead of the more common
everything-is-hidden-away-in-our-proprietary-format), the it might
not be necessary to manually assign the pin numbers when building the
footprints. But if there are not so many footprints it might be
easier to just assign them manually.
The key is getting the footprints built and placed, rather than
trying to import everything and sort it out the huge mess of
unintelligent primitives that can result.
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