Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
John Griessen wrote: On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk wrote: On Thu, 2010-08-12 at 09:17 -0500, John Griessen wrote: OpenNurbs.org has the code, public domain. He's considering forking and licensing it GPL. IMO, that sounds like quite an aggressive thing to do to a code base.. particularly forking, then choosing a less permissive license to release under. He finds there is little community involved using it and no one improving the code except the original commercial publisher for bug fixes. That's the only reason for a fork. ...or the forker has sigificant issues with the way in which the original author/project leader is managing the original tool. For example, the IPCop fork of Smoothwall. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:23:10 +0200, Armin Faltl armin.fa...@aon.at wrote: I want to contribute or give away what I want to and keep my own what I want to keep and if this is not possible with a GPL-license on my own library liked to my own app, I just won't use GPL! If you want to distribute non-Free software that uses Free software components, I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. You want to have your cake (use high-quality libraries for which you get source code and don't have to pay a penny to distribute as part of your software) and eat it too (not have to comply with the request that you make your software Free as well). Why are you surprised that you can't use Free software to write non-Free software? The *whole point* of the GPL is to not only preserve but expand the Free software ecosystem. Have you been asleep for the last 20 years? Peter -- Peter Brett pe...@peter-b.co.uk Remote Sensing Research Group Surrey Space Centre ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Aug 14, 2010, at 4:05 AM, Armin Faltl wrote: Maybe as long as I don't sell my non-free code but just use it in house to compute results GPL doesn't bite, but I don't want to be restricted in that way either. GPL does not restrict your use of my code, but if you wish to distribute my GPL code under the GPL terms, you must abide by those terms. But the GPL does not restrict the owner of code in any way. If you wish to distribute my code under other terms, you can negotiate with me. My code is my code: I can do as I please with it. I can grant you any kind of license to use my code (and I would if the price was right). Your code is your code: you can do as you please with it. GPL does not, and cannot, take any rights whatever from the owner of the code. Like any other license, it is merely a vehicle for the owner of the code to grant rights to others. It does not exclude the use of other vehicles. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Saturday 14 August 2010, Armin Faltl wrote: I think I have the following options then: a) fix the bug myself and reinvent your convenience function which is questionable b) re-release my library under LGPL and ask you to resubmit the patch with same license c) open source or shred my application d) contact the author of the patch and ask if it is ok for you to use in your proprietary version. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
al davis wrote: On Saturday 14 August 2010, Armin Faltl wrote: I think I have the following options then: a) fix the bug myself and reinvent your convenience function which is questionable b) re-release my library under LGPL and ask you to resubmit the patch with same license c) open source or shred my application d) contact the author of the patch and ask if it is ok for you to use in your proprietary version. you mean give me a written and signed permission, i.e. a different license, and that for everyone that may contribute something in the future? Licenses is all about lawyers and suing - never ever ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Aug 14, 2010, at 1:33 PM, Armin Faltl wrote: John Doty wrote: GPL does not restrict your use of my code, but if you wish to distribute my GPL code under the GPL terms, you must abide by those terms. If I'm using your library licensed with GPL in a proprietary application of mine, this is forbidden, right? You can *use* it all you want. GPL forbids *distribution* with applications that don't follow certain rules. But you can negotiate with me for different license terms. Or you can leave my property out of your product. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Its public domain, thats very free, GPL has had is day as a free license, but version 3 has clauses that are very restrictive to others that want to contirbute, i no longer will even consider working on GPL v3 code. On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk wrote: On Thu, 2010-08-12 at 09:17 -0500, John Griessen wrote: OpenNurbs.org has the code, public domain. He's considering forking and licensing it GPL. IMO, that sounds like quite an aggressive thing to do to a code base.. particularly forking, then choosing a less permissive license to release under. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
-Original Message- From: geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org [mailto:geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org] On Behalf Of Steven Michalske Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 8:19 AM To: gEDA user mailing list Subject: Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report Its public domain, thats very free, GPL has had is day as a free license, but version 3 has clauses that are very restrictive to others that want to contirbute, i no longer will even consider working on GPL v3 code. +1 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Steven Michalske wrote: but version 3 has clauses that are very restrictive to others that want to contirbute, -v can you give an example, please? --)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak tel: +49-511-762-2895 Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik fax: +49-511-762-2211 Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de GPG key:http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=Knaak+kmkop=get ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Aug 12, 2010, at 7:17 AM, John Griessen wrote: certain 3D entities are *not* documented, they are binary blobs and you can only get the spec by paying for a license from Autocad and signing an NDA. So no open source dxf library will ever be able to handle all of dxf. My immediate goal is to write a library that can make sense of all 2D information in a complete and coherent way, provide a Pythonic interface for reading and writing dxf, and gracefully ignore or perhaps read-and-blobify anything it doesn't understand without crashing or hanging. Sounds good. Does the blobify function you imagine get the physical max boundaries of the unknown correct? My near-term goals are pretty limited. Beyond processing 2D intelligently and presenting a clean object-oriented interface to 2D entities, my goals are simply to not choke, and to gather information for a single entity all into one place, without trying to process intelligently -- more of a here it is if you know what to do with it. I know someone else working on getting 3D usable by FOSS tools by way of a common open format available as a standard or defacto standard. In electronics it seems defacto standards are better than official ones, so... He's looking at Rhino's OpenNurbs definitions in c++. OpenNurbs.org has the code, public domain. He's considering forking and licensing it GPL. I've been watching FOSS 3D CAD for a while, and until FreeCAD came along the outlook was pretty depressing. The FreeCAD guys, however, are making progress a bullet-train speed. My first instinct would be to find a way to help them. -dave ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Dave N6NZ wrote: I've been watching FOSS 3D CAD for a while, and until FreeCAD came along the outlook was pretty depressing. The FreeCAD guys, however, are making progress a bullet-train speed. My first instinct would be to find a way to help them. If freecad keeps growing at the current rate, it will be useful for decent applications pretty soon. I get the impression that they put lots of serious thought into the infrastructure. Freecad format would be the perfect target for 3D import/export of pcb layout data. Much more powerful than any local eye candy. ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Fri, 2010-08-13 at 11:21 -0700, Dave N6NZ wrote: I've been watching FOSS 3D CAD for a while, and until FreeCAD came along the outlook was pretty depressing. The FreeCAD guys, however, are making progress a bullet-train speed. My first instinct would be to find a way to help them. -dave Why not using IDES/STEP file format. I've seen it's pretty popular in the Aerospace/Mechanics 3D models interchange. And IMO STEP is the most successfully supported format in FOSS so far. Apps: brlcad freecad heekscad salome(not that free, but claims to be Open source) and any toolchain based on Open Cascade there's also python Open Cascade(pyOCC) python bindings. According to my Aerspace related partners, DXF has almost nothing to apport to 3D CAD. Best Regards, Felipe. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user -- Felipe De la Puente Christen Mobile Phone: +56 9 93199807 MSN/GTalk : fdelapue...@gmail.com signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Felipe De la Puente Christen wrote: Why not using IDES/STEP file format. Because STEP is a hell of a standard and non-free, too. It encompasses much more than 3D mechanical data and aims to cover every aspect of every product. The standard itself is closed source. You have to pay real money and sign a NDA document to receive a copy. I once tried figure, how a cube as a 3D equivalent to hello-world would look like in STEP format. There was lots and lots information available _on_ STEP but none on the actual syntax. Going the freecad way would avoid this kind of hassle. According to my Aerspace related partners, DXF has almost nothing to apport to 3D CAD. true. ---)kaimrtin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Aug 13, 2010, at 12:51 PM, Felipe De la Puente Christen wrote: On Fri, 2010-08-13 at 11:21 -0700, Dave N6NZ wrote: I've been watching FOSS 3D CAD for a while, and until FreeCAD came along the outlook was pretty depressing. The FreeCAD guys, however, are making progress a bullet-train speed. My first instinct would be to find a way to help them. -dave snip According to my Aerspace related partners, DXF has almost nothing to apport to 3D CAD. Yes, well, I can't imagine using dxf for any serious 3D work. But it does have 3D entities in the file format. My earlier comments w.r.t. a dxf i/o library reflect both of those statements. :) I don't know much about 3D file formats. I know stl is basically a bag of triangles, and I think stl is also. So while you can communicate a hull, you can't do much more. No parametric information, no material information, no joint information, etc. Not sure about iges, I know pretty much nothing about it. -dave ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Hi all, -Original Message- From: geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org [mailto:geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org] On Behalf Of kai-martin knaak Sent: Friday, August 13, 2010 11:43 PM To: geda-u...@seul.org Subject: Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report Felipe De la Puente Christen wrote: Why not using IDES/STEP file format. Because STEP is a hell of a standard and non-free, too. It encompasses much more than 3D mechanical data and aims to cover every aspect of every product. The standard itself is closed source. You have to pay real money and sign a NDA document to receive a copy. I once tried figure, how a cube as a 3D equivalent to hello-world would look like in STEP format. There was lots and lots information available _on_ STEP but none on the actual syntax. Going the freecad way would avoid this kind of hassle. According to my Aerspace related partners, DXF has almost nothing to apport to 3D CAD. true. ---)kaimrtin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 Intermediate Data Format (IDF) may be a viable solution, some main stream CAD applications use it or have import/export functionality for IDF. The format is described here: http://www.simplifiedsolutionsinc.com/images/idf_v20_spec.pdf Or have a google with IDF CAD. Happy reading. Kind regards, Bert Timmerman. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Peter Clifton pc...@cam.ac.uk wrote: On Thu, 2010-08-12 at 09:17 -0500, John Griessen wrote: OpenNurbs.org has the code, public domain. He's considering forking and licensing it GPL. IMO, that sounds like quite an aggressive thing to do to a code base.. particularly forking, then choosing a less permissive license to release under. He finds there is little community involved using it and no one improving the code except the original commercial publisher for bug fixes. That's the only reason for a fork. John ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Dave N6NZ wrote: I don't know much about 3D file formats. I know stl is basically a bag of triangles, and I think stl is also. So while you can communicate a hull, you can't do much more. No parametric information, no material information, no joint information, etc. Not sure about iges, I know pretty much nothing about it. IGES is an old US military standard. It means 'Initial Graphics Exchange Specification' and the specification for it is freely available, since it's a work from a US government agency (I got it ;-). As the name says, it was meant as preliminary work, but served it's purpose for decades. Now it's being replaced by STEP... For the reason that STEP costs a lot of money, I wonder how the FreeCAD guys want to keep the promisse to provide import and export for it - maybe a feature of the OpenCASCADE kernel - but how did they? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Friday 13 August 2010, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: can you give an example, please? Under GPL-3 you can't make a contribution that applies one of your own patents, then sue the users of the package for patent infringement. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
I can't give an example on the intricacies of GPL v3 of the top of my head, but wanted to write the following to RFS regarding putting libraries under GPL instead of LGPL: I want to contribute or give away what I want to and keep my own what I want to keep and if this is not possible with a GPL-license on my own library liked to my own app, I just won't use GPL! I tried some hours to find an e-mail address of RFS - there must be a reason it's not public... Kai-Martin Knaak wrote: Steven Michalske wrote: but version 3 has clauses that are very restrictive to others that want to contirbute, -v can you give an example, please? --)kaimartin(--- ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Armin Faltl wrote: IGES is an old US military standard. It means 'Initial Graphics Exchange Specification' and the specification for it is freely available, since it's a work from a US government agency (I got it ;-). As the name says, it was meant as preliminary work, but served it's purpose for decades. Now it's being replaced by STEP... Sorry, it's not the military... still you here find the seemingly latest spec: http://www.uspro.org/documents/IGES5-3_forDownload.pdf/view ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Armin Faltl wrote: I tried some hours to find an e-mail address of RFS - there must be a reason it's not public... google Richard Stallman email First hit http://stallman.org/ says email rms at gnu period org ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Thanks - think I tried to find it on gnu.org - and got probably distracted kai-martin knaak wrote: Armin Faltl wrote: I tried some hours to find an e-mail address of RFS - there must be a reason it's not public... google Richard Stallman email First hit http://stallman.org/ says email rms at gnu period org ---)kaimartin(--- ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
al davis wrote: I don't know who RFS is but any license you grant for your own code applies only to those to whom you grant the license. If you write some code, and it's yours, you can license it any way you want. If you make it available for download under GPL, this does not prevent you from granting any other license to anyone, as you choose. There is no requirement that you assign the copyright. Unless you ask anyone that contributes anything to surrender their copyright to you, and you want to do further work based on a version containing 1 char of foreign code I assume you are in trouble. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Hi all, -Original Message- From: geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org [mailto:geda-user-boun...@moria.seul.org] On Behalf Of Bob Paddock Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2010 1:07 AM To: gEDA user mailing list Subject: Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report a 1 part library operating a layout service bureau Take a look at http://wikicomponents.com The worlds first and only truly open source for 2D and 3D PCB component package, part and electrical device data. I did point out to them that http://gedasymbols.org , was around for a while, which not really my point here. I corresponded with Dino Ditta, the person behind the site, when it first opened. There were some ambiguities about the terms of use, as far as being Open Source friendly, and he said that was his intention, and that he would clean up the ambiguities. Don't know if he did that. He was open to having KiCAD and PCB symbols posted there. Maybe we could get behind his 3D effort rather than DXF? Last I looked there were a lot of part numbers, with nothing to back them up, which I did complain about to Dino, don't know if he fixed that. Frustrating to spend time searching the list for it to lead to nothing. -- http://blog.softwaresafety.net/ http://www.designer-iii.com/ http://www.wearablesmartsensors.com/ Excuse me for having a rather pessimistic view about this site. At first sight the story/website sells, I (myself) might even get involved in this idea, at least someone has seen the problem of the EDA user community (this is not the EDA vendor community problem, that one is solved with a 20k++ $ seat of some softwarez). Then I start to look for some oddities and errors, none to be found, it's a near perfect set up. Contributed parts data and the contributors get ranked, OK to me, we should do that on gEDA-symbols site too ;-), let's give some kudos, and warm cuddly hugs to ourselves. Even the Terms of Use are full of legal stuff, now that was to be expected, no surprises here. OK, the German and Chinese translation buttons do not give full translations of everything, just the menu buttons of the webpages get translated into German or Chinese (I think). The mere fact things start with a M$ installer doesn't give an overwhelming Free Open feeling. M$ users are known wanting to pay for everything, either money or valuable time spent on whining for patches/updates (and not scratching their own itch). And how are we addressing the license issue ? I would prefer to contribute with something like GPL, LGPL (it's a library, isn't it) or any other FOSS license. To me the license issue is one of the tell tales of this wikicomponents idea becoming a vendor lock in/out in the future. In the our vision page it is stated (among other things) that Nobody Owns It In the page descibing the Rating System it is stated: quote The most frequently asked question is: Who owns the data? The answer to both of these is the same: The WikiComponents Community. /quote The name is Wikicomponents Inc. that makes it a commercial EDA company with a money trail, where does the money come from and where does it go to ? ... enough said. IMHO, this flipped wikicomponents coin can go just one of two ways: Head: It will work, a bazzillion parts get contributed by thousands of enthousiastic contributors who will produce an error free repo of parts data. And then some day someone will realize that the data contributed is a goldmine and run away with the stuff (gold). Lock in will happen as one of the big EDA companies will buy the data. Lock out will happen as in shutting down the site being the next step. Anyone had made a backup/clone/fork of the data from this site somewhere ? ... Anyone (please) ? ... Nobody (Ok, now that's the person owning the stuff) Tail: Not enough contributors/contributions to gain any/enough leverage against the bazzillion parts out there. I have been there, done that, that is where we are at the moment ;-) I will see how well this goes, things can only get better, for now I scratch my own itch with gEDA and any Automation I can think of for myself. Just my EUR 0.02 Kind regards, Bert Timmerman. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Dave N6NZ wrote: On Aug 11, 2010, at 12:28 PM, John Griessen wrote; What's a good reference about DXF? Arghhh... . . .. the structure of dxf... Imagine a design committee consisting entirely of passive-aggressive, 'B' ark chimpanzees that were only convinced to join the project for the meeting donuts. Now imagine the file format they would specify. Now imagine that file format evolved to support things that were never originally intended. That is dxf. . . certain 3D entities are *not* documented, they are binary blobs and you can only get the spec by paying for a license from Autocad and signing an NDA. So no open source dxf library will ever be able to handle all of dxf. My immediate goal is to write a library that can make sense of all 2D information in a complete and coherent way, provide a Pythonic interface for reading and writing dxf, and gracefully ignore or perhaps read-and-blobify anything it doesn't understand without crashing or hanging. Sounds good. Does the blobify function you imagine get the physical max boundaries of the unknown correct? I know someone else working on getting 3D usable by FOSS tools by way of a common open format available as a standard or defacto standard. In electronics it seems defacto standards are better than official ones, so... He's looking at Rhino's OpenNurbs definitions in c++. OpenNurbs.org has the code, public domain. He's considering forking and licensing it GPL. John -- Ecosensory Austin TX ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Bob Paddock wrote: a 1 part library operating a layout service bureau Take a look at [1]http://wikicomponents.com The worlds first and only truly open source for 2D and 3D PCB component package, part and electrical device data. I corresponded with Dino Ditta, the person behind the site, when it first opened. He was open to having KiCAD and PCB symbols posted there. Maybe we could get behind his 3D effort rather than DXF? After giving it a quick read yesterday, I like Bryan Bishop's SKDB idea better. His concept is a package manager for 3D and BOM data used to make things with FOSS tools. The form of a package is not very rigid -- he wants to use what is out there, but organize it some. If there is a way to get the data ready to feed to a tool, he wants the format to go that far. So for gEDA purposes, since we have no formal project packages, getting a design would likely be getting a project dir to unzip, along with the libraries used and gschemrc and pcb settings needed to modify it. Is there a way to change settings for pcb without using the ~/.pcb dir and only use ./ defined settings? John -- Ecosensory Austin TX ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Thu, 2010-08-12 at 09:17 -0500, John Griessen wrote: OpenNurbs.org has the code, public domain. He's considering forking and licensing it GPL. IMO, that sounds like quite an aggressive thing to do to a code base.. particularly forking, then choosing a less permissive license to release under. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
I attended a trade show/info-mercial to do with printed circuit layout and manufacture yesterday to meet some people to ask for contract work and heard about Mentor CAD tools and overall trends we should pay attention to in planning additions to gEDA tools. A speaker named Tom Hausherr described how he had developed a 1 part library operating a layout service bureau, then sold the library as a business for a while, then sold that business, and started designing software for Mentor to auto-generate libraries, and lead creation the templates to auto-generate from. Mentor has made a tool that will generate variants of a library of footprints to suit IPC or IEC or EIA standards with your preferences of Most, nominal, Least, least, or user specified different from standards amount of solder area for pads, courtyard extra manufacturing allowance, preferences about assembly drawing layers, etc. The tool also relates package 3d shape to footprint per IPC or other standards rules so you can change existing package data to create a new one with similar but different shape quickly -- one view is a plan and elevation of a package, the other is footprint and fill forms that change it via preferences that are relative to the chosen land pattern standard. They market this to freelance layout folks as helping them with career mobility, and to big Co's as efficient. Their next thing planned is to not even have the tool show a plan and elevation, but import 3d DXF, (autocad interchange format), data to filter through preferences and generate a land pattern. Another thing I heard about is the trend to use metric units. Tom H. has lots of experience with doing boards, still does some and was helping with layout of the Red Camera circuit board where they had customers wanting it bad right after the design was simulated to work, but not laid out, so they tried autorouting it and no go until they chose a grid based on 0.05mm spacings. That spacing rule combined with the predominant parts available today let the autorouter work best on that board routing between 1000+ BGA pins among other circuit parts with ten routing layers. PCB already handles 0.05mm spacings fairly well -- might have some rounding artifacts, but not ones that will stop good autorouting that I know of. I've not tried using the autorouter or toporouter with more than 2 layers yet... Anyone? The trend of asking for 3D DXF files from all the manufacturers is something to ponder when anyone gets a coding urge. From such data, ALL that is needed to make a land pattern is extractable, including the website link it comes from, and possibly other BOM data, and it is becoming a defacto standard (which is the way all electronics standards have started). John Griessen -- Ecosensory Austin TX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema_Camera_Company ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Hi John, I was working on a dxf exporter for pcb. Recently did a couple of steps converting this into a pcb plugin for exporting dxf stuff, and maybe importing a pcb outline from mechanical CAD. Problem with dxf is that it doesn't support 3D shapes in a usable way, this remains bound to AutoCAD for further processing. Furthermore I started a pcb footprint wizard in GTK (an open source look-a-like version of Tom's stuff). And had some thoughts about a BGA fanout utility (gfanout) and some automation of adding pinout labels in pcb footprints or gschem symbols or what usage I can further think of (gpinout). Oh, and I bundled some pcb plug-ins. All to be found at http://www:github.com/bert Most of these projects are half baked, you (both the lists) are all invited to bake the other half. This because my spare time is becoming sparse time Kind regards, Bert Timmerman. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
a 1 part library operating a layout service bureau Take a look at [1]http://wikicomponents.com The worlds first and only truly open source for 2D and 3D PCB component package, part and electrical device data. I did point out to them that [2]http://gedasymbols.org , was around for a while, which not really my point here. I corresponded with Dino Ditta, the person behind the site, when it first opened. There were some ambiguities about the terms of use, as far as being Open Source friendly, and he said that was his intention, and that he would clean up the ambiguities. Don't know if he did that. He was open to having KiCAD and PCB symbols posted there. Maybe we could get behind his 3D effort rather than DXF? Last I looked there were a lot of part numbers, with nothing to back them up, which I did complain about to Dino, don't know if he fixed that. Frustrating to spend time searching the list for it to lead to nothing. -- [3]http://blog.softwaresafety.net/ [4]http://www.designer-iii.com/ [5]http://www.wearablesmartsensors.com/ References 1. http://wikicomponents.com/ 2. http://gedasymbols.org/ 3. http://blog.softwaresafety.net/ 4. http://www.designer-iii.com/ 5. http://www.wearablesmartsensors.com/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
Bob Paddock wrote: a 1 part library operating a layout service bureau Take a look at http://wikicomponents.com The site requires registration even for simple reading. :-| ---)kaimartin(--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak Öffentlicher PGP-Schlüssel: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x6C0B9F53 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 7:25 PM, kai-martin knaak [1]...@familieknaak.de wrote: Bob Paddock wrote: a 1 part library operating a layout service bureau Take a look at [2]http://wikicomponents.com The site requires registration even for simple reading. :-| Yeah, I complained about that too. Sorry that I forgot to mention it. References 1. mailto:k...@familieknaak.de 2. http://wikicomponents.com/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
IPC land pattern wizard in protel/altium is very nice as well. So nice infact I've been using it for BGA and many-pin count packages and then exporting to ascii format which my current EDA package can import. On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Bob Paddock bob.padd...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 7:25 PM, kai-martin knaak [1]...@familieknaak.de wrote: Bob Paddock wrote: a 1 part library operating a layout service bureau Take a look at [2]http://wikicomponents.com The site requires registration even for simple reading. :-| Yeah, I complained about that too. Sorry that I forgot to mention it. References 1. mailto:k...@familieknaak.de 2. http://wikicomponents.com/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Commercial CAD, land pattern generators report
On Aug 11, 2010, at 12:28 PM, John Griessen wrote; What's a good reference about DXF? Arghhh... I've spent a bit of time trying to read .dxf correctly. My first shot was for reading .dxf to drive a simple laser cutter that used bastardized HP/GL. I did an ad hoc parser in C after reading Autocad's online documentation, and only attempted to pull out the fraction of the information that interested me. Let's just say I recommend against that approach. ;) My next version of the laser cutter CAM used the Ribbonsoft's dxflib (GPL). dxflib is C++ and is actually a pretty reasonable interface for reading dxf and is very robust. Writing dxf with it requires a pretty good knowledge of the structure of dxf, but reading is straightforward. About that... the structure of dxf... Imagine a design committee consisting entirely of passive-aggressive, 'B' ark chimpanzees that were only convinced to join the project for the meeting donuts. Now imagine the file format they would specify. Now imagine that file format evolved to support things that were never originally intended. That is dxf. I am now working on a new project -- with the intent of reading 2D dxf and producing real, proper, good-to-go, CNC machine g-code that doesn't crash the milling machine or break tools. Wish me luck. (Or volunteer to help??? :) Anyway, I'm doing the project in Python, and after looking for a good dxf reader in Python, briefly considered putting a Python wrapper around dxflib. But that is not a great fit... it's hard to make a Pythonic interface to dxf around dxflib. So... I decided to commit the cardinal sin of all programmers, writing my own library... I can get away with that since there is no one to fire me for such a silly decision. And now I finally get to the point of this rambling e-mail. Since what I want is 100% interoperability with QCad (from Ribbonsoft, uses dxflib for file I/O), I concluded that reading the dxflib code very carefully is about the best dxf file documentation that is around. Autodesk has a lot of online documentation of the file format, and that is indispensable. dxf comes in several versions, and each is documented separately. The documentation that exists on the Autocad web site is reasonably well organized once you learn to navigate it. Be aware, however, that certain 3D entities are *not* documented, they are binary blobs and you can only get the spec by paying for a license from Autocad and signing an NDA. So no open source dxf library will ever be able to handle all of dxf. My immediate goal is to write a library that can make sense of all 2D information in a complete and coherent way, provide a Pythonic interface for reading and writing dxf, and gracefully ignore or perhaps read-and-blobify anything it doesn't understand without crashing or hanging. The not-crashing-and-hanging part will put it ahead of at least some commercial alternatives. HTH If you are interested in talking about my Python dxf I/O lib we should take that off-list. -dave ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
