Ok I may be about to stick my neck out and also stick my foot in my mouth here, so please go easy on me in the reply department.
While I am not totally up to date on this or related threads which deal with importing and / or exporting saving either PCB or Schematic library files in ASCII, there is an old trick that I used back in the mid eighties on some conversion software that I think might be applicable here. Protel has the ability to "create" a "library" from either a PCB (file) or a Schematic (file). Conversly, you have the ability to "place" any library "component" from an existing PCB library or Schematic library into a "dummy" PCB file or "dummy" Schematic (file). We do appear to have the ability to "import" and "export" both PCB files and Schematic Files in at least some form of ASCII format of at least some version of some format or another. The most obvious thing here, is that you can "import" or "export" library items while they are imbedded in an ASCII "import" or "export" of either a PCB or a Schematic, and then recover library components or symbols from, or place them into, a design, as appropriate to get things into or out of a "library" or whatever kind is required. Additionally, it may be a simple thing to access some of these "comment" or other fields that appear in a library component or symbol, by symply saving a design in ASCII, and then editing what you need to edit and then reimporting the whole thing. Anyway, there seem to be numerous avenues to do things when you take the approach of accessing the library indirectly via the design file as it were. One other possible avenue of thought is whether Protel can directly read older versions of ASCII files, which may not explicitly be stated to be supported, but which it can read anyway, and which would not be considered an "import" function. In other words, is there an older version of ASCII libraries files that Protel may still be able to read, even though it may not be known or documented. Of course, on the other hand, maybe now is the time to crack / decode the "binary file format", so that we can write a bunch of little programs to do the things that we want to do directly, so that we can simply generate Protel compatible binary files of the items that we want and call them library files and open them directly. Before we all go off and write little programs to generate or convert binary files, is their some industry standard that provides a standard ASCII format for library components (either PCB or Schematic), such as possibly EDIF (which I know nothing about)? Food for thought. JaMi Smith ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dennis Saputelli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Protel EDA Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 12:28 PM Subject: Re: [PEDA] Exporting Protel 99SE Library files > yes, i just assumed he was referring to PCB libraries which you cannot > save as ASCII > > i made this assumption simply because i was recently (slightly) > intrigued by the possibility of using the comment field somehow for > notes. > > the comment field is not exposed in the PCB lib editor, but of course it > is in the PCB editor > > it seemed to me that the data area must be reserved in the PCB lib part > so i tried to save as ascii to examine it > and was surprised that that function was not available > > Dennis Saputelli > > Steve Wiseman wrote: > > > > 05/10/2002 19:16:27, "Dennis Saputelli" > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > >i don't think you can > > > > Er, File -> Save As -> Format: Advanced Schematic Ascii Library (*.asc) > > seems to do the job. > > > > PCB libraries, I dunno... > > > > Steve > > > > "Peder K. Hellegaard" wrote: > > > > > > How do you save/export Protel 99SE library files in ascii format ????? > > > > > > > -- > ___________________________________________________________________________ > www.integratedcontrolsinc.com Integrated Controls, Inc. > tel: 415-647-0480 2851 21st Street > fax: 415-647-3003 San Francisco, CA 94110 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
